Manitoba 'depression shower' TikToker wants to scrub away mental health stigma

By the time Melissa McCausland worked up the courage to clean her shower, its walls were black with grime and mould.

But with a few brushes and a bottle of cleaning solution, the 21-year-old finally tackled the chore that clinical depression had kept her from addressing for almost a year.

A month later, the Morden, Man., woman is still chipping away at the task — but now has millions of people cheering her on, after she started posting the process on TikTok.

"It's just become this monstrous task that I don't feel capable of completing. I tried to hire someone to clean it, but they said it would be $75," she said in the first of her cleaning videos.

"And since I can't really afford that right now, I got myself some cleaning supplies. I might only be able to do a little bit each day, but eventually I'll get there."

The clips show McCausland scrubbing, scraping and wiping down what she calls her "depression shower."

It's a part of her life that has become a kind of metaphor for her mental illness. As that worsened, so did the condition of the shower — which in turn made her feel worse every time she stepped inside.

McCausland has since racked up nearly 80,000 followers on the social media site, with several of her cleaning videos getting millions of views. Some followers have even sent her supplies, like a power scrubber and a detachable shower head.

"The reaction online has honestly been so heartwarming. It has been better than I could have ever imagined," she told host Marcy Markusa in an interview with CBC Manitoba's Information Radio.

"It really goes to show ... I wasn't alone."

'Defeating a monster'

McCausland said people also started commenting with support and advice, like suggestions for what products to use and reminders to wear gloves and a mask.

She hopes sharing her lifelong experiences with mental illness can help shatter misconceptions about it.

While awareness of mental health challenges may have grown in recent years, there's still often a lack of understanding about what those conditions can look like in real life, McCausland said.

"Everybody's a mental health advocate until it comes to actually seeing somebody exhibiting symptoms. And then it's like a whole different story," she said.

"People are more than willing to be like, 'Oh, you're sad? Yeah, cool. I understand that.' But when it comes to actual symptoms, [like how] I haven't had the energy to clean my shower for this long, they're like, 'That's disgusting.'"

Now that she's nearing the end of the project, McCausland said she's glad she decided not to pay someone else to clean her shower.

"It's like defeating a monster," she said. 

"It's kind of just proving to myself, like, 'Yes, you can do it. You're resilient. You're tough. You got this.'"