Charity Lawson’s Mental-Health Reckoning — From Child Therapist to Reality-TV Survivor

Mian Hamid November 12, 2025

Charity Lawson’s Mental-Health Reckoning — From Child Therapist to Reality-TV Survivor

When Charity Lawson stepped from therapy offices in Columbus, Georgia, into primetime television, viewers met a warm, empathetic professional whose job was helping children and families heal. What few expected was how quickly public exposure would turn that vocation inside out: charity’s unique perspective—trained to spot trauma and build resilience—became a lifeline as the very shows that elevated her subjected her to severe online abuse, narrative manipulation, and threats that pushed her mental health to the brink.

This article digs deeper than past profiles. Using Charity’s own experiences as a case study, we unpack how reality TV production practices, racial bias, and toxic online culture interact to harm contestants — and propose concrete, therapist-backed fixes producers and platforms can adopt now. (Includes latest first-person reporting about Charity’s experiences on Dancing with the Stars.)

  • Child & family therapist; master’s in clinical mental health counseling from Auburn University — clinically trained in trauma-informed care. 

  • Rose to national prominence on The Bachelor and later led Season 20 of The Bachelorette. 

  • Transitioned from clinician to public figure; engaged to Dotun Olubeko during her Bachelorette season. 

Charity has publicly described experiencing sustained, racially tinged online harassment and even death threats during her run on Dancing with the Stars — an experience she called “hell and back.” She reported that the on-set and social media fallout affected her so severely she asked for an on-set therapist and at times wished to be voted off to escape the abuse. That admission is a rare, unvarnished look at the downstream effects of reality TV exposure.

Why does this matter? Because Charity is not an abstract celebrity—she’s a clinician who understands trauma. When she says the experience harmed her mental health, it’s not tabloid hyperbole; it’s a professional-level signal of risk.

This isn’t only Charity’s story. Pew Research found roughly four-in-ten Americans report experiencing some form of online harassment, and the most severe forms (threats, stalking, sexual harassment) have intensified for many groups. Reality TV personalities, who are thrust suddenly into hypervisibility, routinely experience concentrated waves of abuse that are both personal and racialized.

  1. Narrative editing and character packaging. Short, heavily edited clips can create a “villain” almost overnight — a psychological dissonance between who contestants are and how viewers see them. Producers seek drama; editing seeks coherence — not truth.

  2. Isolation + performance pressure. Contestants are cut off from normal supports (family, friends, therapy) during filming, a setup experts say elevates vulnerability. 

  3. Social amplification. Fans, influencers, and coordinated trolls can create streams of targeted abuse that persist long after cameras stop rolling.

  4. Racialized targeting. Black contestants frequently report that race compounds the abuse they face online and in public narratives — a factor Charity specifically highlighted. 

Because Charity is a trained therapist, her public accounts allow us to see reality-TV harm in clinical terms: repeated threats and racialized harassment can produce anxiety, PTSD symptoms, hypervigilance, and depressive episodes. Her steps—asking for on-set therapy, stepping back when necessary—map to best-practice interventions for acute stress. Those interventions should be standard, not optional.

These are actionable, evidence-aligned protocols that reality shows can adopt immediately to reduce harm:

  1. Mandatory pre-show mental-health screening by independent clinicians with power to veto casting when severe risk is present. (Already used in some formats; make it universal.) 

  2. On-set licensed therapists available in real time — not PR people — during all high-stress segments. Charity requested on-set therapy for a reason. 

  3. Editing transparency policies: provide participants an ethics liaison who can flag edits that materially change a contestant’s portrayal.

  4. Post-show offboarding and long-term aftercare: six months minimum of counseling, social-media management, and safety planning. Vogue and other outlets document similar practices on some shows, but standardized industry-wide care remains spotty. 

  5. Coordinated anti-harassment partnership with platforms: producers should route verified reports of targeted threats to platforms and law enforcement, and pre-authorize takedown or protective actions.

  6. Racial-bias auditing of production processes, hair/makeup support, and narrative edits to minimize racialized misportrayals. Charity has advocated for better representation and behind-the-scenes changes.

  • ~41% of Americans report some form of online harassment. The severity of those experiences has increased, indicating the social cost of virality. 

  • Independent reporting and university research note that people working in film and TV report higher rates of mental-health problems relative to general populations — making robust production safeguards essential. 

  • Immediate safety plan: document threats, screenshot abusive content, report to platform and local authorities if threats include violence.

  • Digital hygiene: temporarily restrict comments, use verified statements from show reps to push platform moderation, and lean on professional social-media managers.

  • Therapeutic stabilization: short-term CBT or trauma-focused therapy to manage intrusive thoughts, grounding techniques for acute stress, and a scaffolded return to public life.

  • Media coaching: to manage interviews that can re-traumatize and reduce exposure to hostile environments.

Charity Lawson’s journey reframes reality TV as a public-health concern: the combination of professional storytelling, racialized attacks, and social-media amplification creates predictable harm that’s preventable with policy and care. Her voice bridges clinical expertise and lived experience—making her insights uniquely credible and urgently actionable. 

(Reporting note: Charity has said she “went through hell and back” during DWTS, requested on-set therapy, and described receiving death threats and racist comments — statements that underscore the urgent need for industry reform.)

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