Disambiguation

• the character "Menhera-chan" created by the company Joynet → メンヘラちゃん。
• the character and manga series by Bisuko Ezaki → メンヘラチャン

Overview

The term was originally coined by the members of the 2channel mental health board as a nickname for themself in order to find each other outside of the site. As the name sugests, 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 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 prejuice, 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 "Menhera" have to face in their daily life.