My sister has a YouTube channel dedicated to her mental health struggles, but also includes her opinions on whatever’s on her mind. It’s not heavily produced; it’s basically her ranting to the camera.
She talks a lot about how she feels the healthcare system has failed her in helping her treat mental illness and a developmental delay. And also explains how she feels on a day-to-day basis, and sometimes also rants about whatever’s on her mind, often about social media trends that bother her.
One of the things that I find concerning me is that she seems to exaggerate the role of others when things upset her. Earlier this year, she stayed with me over a weekend because she had a big fight with mom about complicated family stuff.
She posted a video titled something along the lines of “I’m basically homeless now,” when that really, really wasn’t the case. She was upset and asked to stay with me. Mom and dad didn’t kick her out.
She seems to have a pretty consistent group of people who watch her stuff, and even though her videos make at most a couple thousand views, there are always dozens or hundreds of comments, so there is a significant group of people who follow her activity and engage with her.
Most comments seem to come from young people experiencing mental illness as well, and are generally very supportive.
My 2 main concerns are her revealing too much and putting herself at risk with internet randos, and her using this as a way to be validated even when she might not be entirely right in her actions with the people around her. I’m also concerned for her mental well-being if she is ever harassed online.
Is there anything I could do to bring up these concerns? How can I bring this up without her feeling attacked?
tl;dr: My sister experiences mental illness and a slight developmental delay. She has a YouTube channel where she talks about it all and her opinions on many other things. I’m concerned she may be partially using it as a way to have others tell her she’s right when she has a conflict with people in her life, and also that she may put her safety at risk by revealing too much identifying info. Also, I’m concerned for her mental well-being if she is ever harassed online. How to bring all of this up to her?