Oliwia & Ewelina
- 3 min read

Mental health behind Astroworld 2021

Astroworld 2021 explained

Astroworld - a music festival hosted yearly by Travis Scott since 2018. This year the festival started on the 5th. An estimate of 50 thousand people attended Travi’s concert. The number of tickets sold was larger than in the previous year despite the exact same venue. Additionally, people were seen knocking down the gates and entering the venue with no tickets. When the huge crowd start compressing toward the front stage people panicked. Whether it was by being squished in between others, pressed against railings, being knocked down by the crowd, or fainting due to lack of oxygen, the number of injuries only kept increasing. Videos of people chanting to stop the show were since posted online but the concert kept going until the whole 25 song set was finished.

10 people died and many more sustained physical injuries. The mental health effects of experiencing those events in person cannot be measured but will stay with all survivors.

The mental health aftermath

Survivor guilt

When people have suffered a life-threatening situation while others did not feel a sense of guilt. It is a quite common symptom of PTSD (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder)

Trauma

Psychological response to traumatic experiences includes emotional symptoms such as denial, anxiety, mood swings, feelings of hopelessness, and disconnecting from your surroundings as well as physical ones including insomnia, fatigue, difficulty concentrating or muscle tension, aches, and pains.

PTSD

After experiencing traumatic events people can suffer from intrusive thoughts, vivid flashbacks, or relieving the events in their dreams. Avoidance may cause them to stay away from anything that reminds them of the trauma experienced. Other common symptoms include fear, anger, guilt, inability to remember the events or misassigning blame, irritability, and reckless self-destructive behavior.

Grief

When deadline with loss of loved ones people may go through emotions such as shock, disbelief, anger, guilt, and extreme sadness.

The BetterHelp collaboration

In his Instagram apology Travis Scott offered the victims a month of free online mental health counseling with Better Help. The offer has been met with a lot of criticism:

People see it as another brand deal with influencers and celebrities which was a common BetterHelp practice in the past.
One month is said to not be nearly enough to process the trauma or grief that people are going through.
Many expressed worries about BetterHelp’s data protection policy; they are worried that their data will be sold to third-party advertisers.
The site states that it is not suitable for minors and many of Astrworld attendees are under the age of 18 making them ineligible for the counseling.

However, mental health experts warn about dismissing that offer so quickly - even a few sessions could be helpful: talking and processing are crucial in the aftermath of traumatic experiences. Moreover, BetterHelp president has said denied that Travis Scott is being paid for the partnership and that data is being sold to third parties or advertisers