Root Cause of All Mental Illnesses? Sophie Turner Warns Against the Dangers of Social Media

Mental HealthNovember 26, 2019

Sophie Turner must be so lucky, right? She plays Sansa Stark in the global phenomenon that is Game of Thrones and she is engaged to a Jonas brother. Could life get any better than that?

But recently, the actress has been publicly sharing what goes on behind the scenes, when the paparazzi are not following her around, and when she’s not gracing our screens as the Lady of Winterfell.

Just this month (and it isn’t the first time she’s doing this), Sophie talked about her battle with depression that has been ongoing for half a decade or more now.

Sophie has been open about her battle with depression that has been ongoing for half a decade

Speaking to Dr. Phil McGraw, the 23-year-old confessed that she has been depressed for almost six years now and her condition hasn’t gotten any better with time. According to her, she struggles to love herself, and it is always a challenge to sum up the courage to leave her house.

Sansa to Blame?

Unfortunately, Sophie blames Sansa (in a way) for all her troubles. As she puts it, her mental health issues started at least four years into filming GoT, when she was just about to turn 18.

Turner says that being on set meant that she couldn’t attend university when all her friends were doing so, and she also couldn’t move out of her parents’ house.

A combination of all these factors left her a lonely teenager, proving to be detrimental to her mental health.

Wanting to dig a little deeper, Dr. McGraw inquired whether social media had any role to play in Sophie’s depression.

To this, she replied that it most certainly had a significant contribution, but it wasn’t the main factor. She actually described it as a catalyst speeding up the process of messing up with her mind.

Sophie says that social media has only made her depression and anxiety worse

Online Bullies

Online trolls caused her gratuitous mental disruption, as critics attacked her acting skills along with her appearance, going by reports from USA Today.

As she told her host, Sophie received negative comments about her skin tone, weight, and how poor an actress she was.

At her age back then, you couldn’t fault her for being affected by all this. Actors who’ve spent decades in the industry also get trolled and take it to heart!

Unfortunately, Sophie would believe all the nasty comments about her and she began worrying about her looks, and her interaction with the world got severely impacted.

Thank god for her amazing fiance who has always been her biggest supporter

Naturally, her acting was also impacted, but she must have done a pretty good job at hiding it because as a GoT fanatic, I have personally never seen anything wrong with her acting.

Some symptoms of depression include fatigue, low mood, or even suicidal thoughts. On a severe scale, depression affects even the simplest of daily tasks such as eating and sleeping.

As Turner told McGraw, she lacked the motivation to do a single thing. She didn’t even want to meet her best friends or even share a meal with them.

Fortunately, most of that is in the past now, and Turner believes that she’s getting better. She has professional help and she’s also under medication.

Additionally, her fiancé Joe Jonas is with her every step of the way, and she’s learning to love herself more every day.