A camera pans around Abegael Milot’s bedroom. The floor is mostly invisible, hidden by piles of clothes. Four large plastic baskets are stacked on top of each other, some filled with laundry, others with electronics. There are eight abandoned cups of coffee on the desk and bedside table. On the floor lie two half-empty water bottles, a novelty bottle of tequila with a glass cactus inside, and a pet food dispenser.
“Today we’re going to be cleaning my depression room,” the 24-year-old YouTube star, who posts videos as Abbe Lucia, tells the camera. “I fear that the only way that I will make myself clean this room is if I film it.”
The term “depression room” is relatively new, popularized by videos on TikTok and YouTube that have accrued hundreds of millions of views. But experts have long recognized the link between messiness and mental health. The clutter that can accumulate when people are experiencing a mental health crisis is neither a form of hoarding, nor the result of laziness. The culprit is extreme fatigue, said N. Brad Schmidt, a distinguished research professor of psychology at Florida State University.
People are “oftentimes just so mentally and physically exhausted that they don’t feel like they have the energy to take care of themselves or their surroundings,” Dr. Schmidt said. “They just don’t have the capacity to engage with housecleaning and upkeep that they probably once did.”
