The term menhera (メンヘラ) was originally coined by users of the 2channel mental health board as a nickname for themself in order to find each other outside of the site. As the name suggests, it is a combination of "mental health" and "er", meaning "someone who does mental health". The mental health board is a place where people exchange about mental health issues such as mental illness and depression. Therefore, the term was initially only used by people with mental illness as a way to refer to themself in order to form a community.
However, at some point the term started spreading outside of mental health spaces, and is often used in a derogatory manner due to the social stigma towards mental health issues. This has resulted in the term having both a positive and negative meaning, meaning you need to be careful about when to use menhera as it might be easily misunderstood.
On pixiv, there is relatively little prejudice, and there are many works that use menhera from a neutral or understanding perspective, as well as vent art that that expresses the mental struggles menheras have to face in their daily life.
Around 2010, the internet became actively involved in the redefinition of the concept of yandere, and the negative aspects of yandere began to be idealized as a moe trait. During that time, similar characteristics were also mistakenly attributed to menhera, and it would often be depicted as someone who uses self-harm as a means to threaten the lover, fakes illness for pity, and other attention seeking behavior.
While the yandere trope also became popular for male characters, menhera still tends to be predominantly female, and there is also a general misunderstanding that women in love become mentally ill. Psychologists have noted that the common depictions of menhera resemble borderline personality disorder, but it shouldn't be attributed carelessly as more complex factors come into play for a proper diagnosis.
In addition, ever since yandere became a moe character trope, some people began to argue that the difference between the two is that yandere refers to fictional characters with mental illness whereas menhera only applies to people in the real world. However, this is also an extreme oversimplification as there are people with yandere-like tendencies in the real world the same way there are fictional characters who are menhera.
- The character Menhera-chan created by the company Joynet → Kurumi Nanase
- The character and manga series by Bisuko Ezaki → Menhera-chan
