For anyone who follows Nicole Arbour, the popular YouTube personality, you have probably seen her video assault on depression, where she discounts a legitimate mental health affliction as a personal problem that people can just “get over” with a little bit of sunshine and positive thinking. 

For anyone to actually believe that depression is “all in someone’s head,” is absolutely irresponsible.

It is attitudes like this that continue to stigmatize mental health issues and try to make honest clinical problems seem fictitious in nature.

I grant you this, some of what she says has brief merit. There are lifestyle changes that you can make to help with depression, especially if your situation is mild, but it’s important to seek out professional help. Clinical severe depression is much more than being sad or not being able to get out of bed or whatever. It’s much worse.

She just writes it off as “oh, this person is just sad, so don’t be sad anymore...” Well, as anyone with depression will tell you, it doesn’t exactly work like that in real life. You might compare it to telling someone with cancer to just stop having cancer.

Depression is every bit as real as any other affliction. It is real, it is measurable, it is scary, and it can send people to some really, really dark places. For her to stand by this is irresponsible. You cannot discourage or discredit mental health, nor can you discourage people from seeking professional help. That attitude is what gets people hurt or even killed at their own hand. 

This petition demands that she needs to (1) take the video down, immediately, (2) issue a statement apologizing for this gross irresponsibility, and (3) agree not to comment on public health issues moving forward. If this cannot be achieved, she needs to be removed from the internet altogether.