It’s well-known that depression takes a toll on physical and mental health as feelings of isolation, loneliness, despair and low energy prevail.

One area that doesn’t get as much attention? Depression’s impact on your physical space, like your home or bedroom – but a conversation about this is starting on social media.

Folks on platforms like Instagram and TikTok are posting videos of their “depression rooms” – spaces filled with old laundry, trash, dirty dishes, takeout boxes and more that weren’t attended to when someone was feeling low. The videos show people cleaning their (or their loved ones’) “depression homes” or “depression rooms.”

“‘Depression room’ is this term that has entered into the pop psychology lexicon lately, and it refers to the living space of a person in the grips of a depressive episode,” said Dayton Olsen, a licensed professional counsellor with Thriveworks in Roanoke, Virginia.

“A ‘depression room’ describes a living space that has become noticeably cluttered or chaotic because the person living in it is experiencing depression,” said Kobe Campbell, a licensed clinical mental health counsellor in North Carolina.

“It’s not about laziness or lack of care, it’s a sign that the inner world has become so heavy or disorganised that maintaining the outer world feels impossible,” Campbell added.

“The state of the room becomes a mirror of what is happening internally,” Campbell noted.

“It’s amazing what even just a brief glance into someone’s living space can say about how that person’s doing,” Olsen said. A picture – or video, in this case – speaks 1,000 words, he added.

“These awful depressive episodes, they do to a person’s living space what they do to a person. They rob them of the ability to just care for themselves, to tend to themselves and their space,” Olsen noted.

“Depression impairs executive function, which is the area of the brain that helps us plan, prioritise and follow through on tasks,” said Campbell.

When you’re depressed, everyday tasks and chores feel overwhelming, Campbell added.

People who’ve dealt with depression describe it as a period of timelessness “where they can’t remember back, necessarily, to a time where they didn’t feel depressed, and they can’t imagine a future where they feel differently,” Olsen said.

“They’re just frozen in this awful emotional pain, and what that translates to so often is this difficulty to do what so many of us typically do when we’re well, which is to make small investments in our future – brushing our teeth, vacuuming, folding laundry, bathing, eating regularly, all of these things that don’t necessarily require a ton of energy or mental bandwidth but they do require looking ahead to the future and investing in that. And depression robs us of that,” Olsen explained.

Depression also robs folks of their energy and motivation, which can make things like doing the dishes or hanging up your clothes feel impossible.

“When you think about psychology and mental health, there’s this feedback loop between your thoughts, your feelings and your behaviours,” explained Taisha Caldwell-Harvey, a psychologist and the founder and CEO of The Black Girl Doctor, an online therapy and wellness platform.

When your behaviour changes, and you’re no longer cleaning your bedroom or letting dishes pile up, it also influences how you think, talk to yourself and how you feel, she said.

“It’s all a circle, it’s all a loop, and so you might look around and say, ‘Oh, I’m gross, I’m lazy,’ and then if you say that, now you’re going to have [thoughts like] ‘I shouldn’t be doing this,’ ‘I’m a bad person,’ and that’s going to trigger emotions that are connected to that – now I’m sad, I feel guilty, I feel bad,” Caldwell-Harvey said.

If you feel bad, why would you do anything around your house? If you tell yourself you’re lazy, why would you pick up after yourself?

The clean-up depression room videos on social media are a way to break this feedback loop and make people feel better, Caldwell-Harvey said.

“Most of the times, we can’t just tell ourselves ‘feel better,’ right? The feeling [aspect] is the hardest one to try to interrupt… we usually let that one be for a minute and start with something that is an easier place, and so behaviour activation is a big one that is usually easier for people to do,” Caldwell-Harvey said.

“So, while you feel like crap, while you’re still telling yourself these negative things, you can force yourself to do a behaviour. We call it behaviour activation. And so it could be something like clean up your room, [or] it can be something as small as clean up this corner of your room,” she added.

If you don’t have it in you to clean your whole kitchen, set a timer for five minutes and clean for just that amount of time.

“So, you clean for five minutes, and now you think, ‘Oh, I did one small thing,’” she said. Being able to say to yourself, “I did one small thing” can lead to a tiny bit of hope and even a commitment to do five more minutes of cleanup the next day, she added.

This breaks the cycle and interrupts the pattern, she explained.

“Our environment influences our emotional health. A 2010 study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found that women who described their homes as cluttered or unfinished had higher levels of cortisol and more feelings of fatigue and depression compared to those who described their spaces as restful and restorative,” said Campbell.

“So, even small acts of tidying can help signal safety to the nervous system,” Campbell noted.

Beyond signalling safety, your home can give you a peek into your emotional and mental health, which is important as it’s hard to keep tabs on the small mental health changes that lead to big declines.

Usually, people wake up one day and feel totally depressed, but it doesn’t happen overnight, Caldwell-Harvey said. “You actually have a decline,” she said.

One way to keep tabs on your mental health and be aware of the decline is by using your bedroom or home as a mental health check, Caldwell-Harvey added.

“A lot of times, your environment really is telling you how you’re doing, and so it’s a good question to ask – ‘What is my environment telling me about what’s happening right now?’” she said.

Depression is heavy, isolating and scary. If you have a depression room during times of low mood, that’s OK. “If you have a ‘depression room,’ you are not alone,” said Campbell.

“Feeling shame about it is understandable, but misplaced. Clutter isn’t a character flaw, it’s a flag signalling that you need more support than you can offer yourself,” she added.

It’s also a sign that you’re struggling and need additional care, Campbell noted.

Beyond taking a few minutes to clean your depression room, make social plans and create structure for yourself within your home, added Olsen, whether that’s waking up at the same time, logging on to work at a certain time or simply having a glass of water before bed.

“I always want to be really careful when we talk about stuff like this,” said Caldwell-Harvey.

While content about “depression rooms” can help people feel less alone and increase conversations about depression, “I also am really cautious that we’re not glamorising suffering, and that we’re not further stigmatising people that are in a clinical depression that needs treatment,” she said.

You can have symptoms of depression and not have clinical depression, Caldwell-Harvey explained. But for those with clinical depression, things like room cleaning, behaviour changes or daily mantras aren’t going to be enough to boost your mood.

If two weeks go by and you still aren’t feeling good, you may need more support, she noted.

“If you’re struggling and you are trying this stuff, and you’re just like, ‘Yeah, this ain’t doing it,’ that’s when we want you to reach out for help,” she said. “That is what therapists are for. Medication is really effective for depression – medication and talk therapy are both extremely effective for depression,” Caldwell-Harvey added.

For some people, a depression room – and depression – may be a short-lived occurrence, but for others, it’ll be a longer challenge.

“Cleaning your room is not going to take away grief. It might make you feel better for a minute, and that’s great if it does, but again, you probably need to talk to somebody and process it and do all the things that are going to give you the long-term relief from what you’re going through,” she said.

“Not all messy rooms are depression rooms. Not all depression shows up that way,” she added. Some depressed people have spotless homes, and some non-depressed folks have cluttered, messy spaces, Caldwell-Harvey added.

But if you know your depression room is just that, be sure to take care of yourself and be kind to yourself.

“The goal isn’t to flip a switch that changes you immediately. Healing requires tiny, consistent acts of kindness toward yourself, because caring for your space is caring for yourself, said Campbell.