Instagrammer Elyse Fox: the Woman Pioneering Mental Health for Young Girls

The Sad Girls Club founder says connecting with others through Instagram helped her manage her depression.

Sad Girls Club is building an open community around mental health in a non-judgmental way.

The Internet consists of a lot of good sites, platforms, and services that provide people with a supportive community to identify with. Sad Girls Club is one of them: the aim of the project is to let girls talk about mental health freely.

Pushing the Conversation About Millennial Mental Health

Elyse Fox is a self-taught filmmaker and trailblazer who uses her art to break down stigmas surrounding mental health. Her latest project, spawned from a year-long episode of depression, is captured in a documentary titled Conversations with Friends and talks about the two things Fox says got her through her worst depression – friends and travel.

The outpouring of positive feedback from women all over the world after its release, was the catalyst for her to form Sad Girls Club, both an online resource and an IRL community that brings women together to discuss the subject of mental health in an open and non-judgmental forum.

Yumi Yamsuan, for Hypebae, sat down with Fox to discuss what makes her documentary unique, what Sad Girls Club is all about and why it was able to resonate particularly with communities of colour where therapy, treatment, and diagnosis are not normalised. Read below and connect with Sad Girls Club HERE.

Source: Hypebae Main Image: Instagram/elyse.fox

The Sad Girls Club offers mental health facts, art inspiration submitted by followers, and tips

You’re a first generation Caribbean-American woman and Brooklyn native. Can you tell us what your upbringing was like?

I grew up in a pretty strict household where I bounced around between NYC and Buffalo for school. I would say I was somewhat sheltered as the youngest in my house. Getting anything but the best grades was non-negotiable and anything below honor roll wasn’t accepted. In my house, mental health wasn’t a topic that was discussed growing up. Many of my Caribbean friends experienced the same feelings of isolation.

You released a documentary last year about your struggle with depression titled Conversations with Friends. Can you tell us a little bit more about the response to it?

The response was incredibly positive. I was completely anxious before releasing the film, but once it was out in the world, I had girls from all over getting in contact with me, asking me for advice and thanking me for speaking up about depression. I resonated with women of color specifically, because they previously had no one else to relate to in regards to their mental health issues. I wanted to be vulnerable and remove the “perfect” mask that social media perpetuates.

Why is it so hard to be honest about sadness and depression?

There’s always been a negative stigma that surrounds the conversation. It’s something that people feel ashamed of and I never had a role model to look up to. It’s hard to be honest about being depressed because in many cases, people may not know what’s going on internally. The conversation of mental health isn’t promoted in a positive light so I was extremely apprehensive to discuss my personal issues because I feared judgement and alienation.

Tell us about the community of women who are in Sad Girls Club.

Our online following is about 94-percent women, and they’re definitely are a diverse bunch. The majority is based in the United States, UK, Canada, Australia and India. Our IRL community also consists of a variety of women but are mostly women of color who range between 15 to 25.

Sad Girls Club has become a trusted resource especially among millennial women who identify with you. Why is it important to foster this community and how will you continue to build and further its mission?

I encourage the community to be as open as possible and feel comfortable to make friends through SGC. I launched a Kickstarter campaign on June 1 in hopes to fund a Sad Girls Club speaking tour this winter.

Social media undoubtedly affects mental health. How does Sad Girls Club address this?

The Sad Girls Club Instagram offers mental health facts, art inspiration submitted by our followers and tips to help girls navigate through their depression while remaining anonymous. We discuss mental health in a very casual way and are creating new ways to present and incite a dialogue. I encourage the girls to comment and ignite a conversation beneath our posts.