Monica Lewinsky’s New PSA Explores a Lethal, Silent Epidemic. Would You Recognize the Signs?

Children around the world are getting sick, doctors are confounded, and parents are at a loss. No, it’s not some new strain of swine flu. But it is the subject of a new PSA from Monica Lewinsky in partnership with BBDO New York and Dini von Mueffling Communications.

“Epidemic” is her latest campaign, the third in a powerful series of ads designed to raise awareness about a silent and lethal epidemic. The video introduces audiences to a teen girl whose health deteriorates at a rapid clip over the course of film. First she’s home from school, then she can’t eat or sleep. In a panic, she reaches for a bottle of pills. In under two minutes, viewers see her go from normal, robust teen to unconscious girl in the E.R. Picture an episode of House or Grey’s Anatomy. A patient presents with a near-fatal illness, but doctors feel like there must be some essential information missing. The right blood work, some specific test. It’s obvious this person is sick, but what’s the pathogen?

In the video, words flash across the screen and offer a clue. “This story is not what it seems. Go to the-epidemic.com/realstory to get the message.”

Follow that link, and a new screen prompts viewers to enter their phone number. Then the video starts over, except this time the person watching it receives the same texts that the girl in the campaign does. The messages are devastating—a deluge of threats, harassment, and abuse. Viewers don’t just watch it unfold; we experience it. “It’s like the difference between seeing something in 3D and seeing something in VR,” Lewinsky tells Glamour of the campaign’s interactive elements. It makes the abuse that people face on the internet, through their phones, and IRL feel real, immediate, and dangerous.

It also made the project a challenge for Lewinsky to work on, given how well she knows the issue. “It was hard for me to do this,” she admits. “It was excruciating to see the PSA filmed, because I dip into personal, old places to help to bring an emotional context to it.” Drawing on her own experiences, Lewinsky, 46, wanted to capture what she calls “that cascading feeling, that overwhelming feeling, the tsunami of texts that come in and the vitriol.” Not just in the video, but in the messages that participants receive.

In an appearance on the Today show this morning, Lewinsky elaborated: “The bullying crisis has become a global epidemic. It can be hard to see the signs of when someone’s going through this and then, even worse than all of that is the fact that this behavior, with cyberbullying, even though it takes place online, there are offline consequences, and these consequences can range from bad to grave.”

Lewinsky has heard cyberbullying dismissed as an emotional or psychological problem, as though its impact is not as severe as physical injury. But she knows both from her own past and from research that the divide between those two forms of abuse is increasingly thin. A trauma psychiatrist with whom Lewinsky has worked pointed her to a recent study that shows that social pain and physical pain travel some of the same neural pathways.

“There’s actually more of a linkage between them than we might have previously thought," Lewinsky says.

Still, differences remain. Because while bruises and cuts are visible to parents, teachers, and friends, emotional wounds can be harder to spot. “This is everybody’s worst nightmare—to miss the signs,” Lewinsky says. “And I think one of the best things that we can be doing is have these kinds of conversations, and what we hope to be a positive result from this PSA is that it brings awareness to the kinds of conversations parents should be having with their kids.”

Lewinsky remembers that when she was growing up, her parents would tell her, “Be home by sundown.” They wanted her to to be safe. But now, as she notes, “kids can be safe in their physical home, but they’re not emotionally safe because of what may be happening online.” And until people break a culture of silence around the issue, victims will continue to feel isolated and even ashamed when it happens to them. “I worry the most about the person who is suffering in silence this very second as we’re talking,” Lewinsky says. “There are so many different ways to be chipping at this issue, but how do we support those people right now?”

To that end, the PSA supports a range of organizations, each with a unique approach to the epidemic that Lewinsky identifies, including Amanda Todd Legacy, The Childhood Resilience Foundation, Crisis Text Line, Defeat The Label, and the Tyler Clementi Foundation.

“The more we’re doing those things, the more awareness we’re bringing,” Lewinsky says. “Each aspect of this effort destigmatizes the shame around cyberbullying and offline bullying. And that’s the most important thing to me.”

Over two decades ago, when Lewinsky was pummeled in the press and attacked, what helped her survive was the support of those closest to her. “I just had people who loved me and who really helped reflect back to me my true self.” It was a subtle, modest reminder that she wasn’t the worst things people said about her⁠. All this time later, she’s grateful for it. It’s not an expensive drug or a lab-tested cure to this global epidemic, but she knows it helps: “It’s one of the most critical things a person can do.”

Mattie Kahn is the senior culture editor at Glamour. Follow her on Twitter @mattiekahn.

Originally Appeared on Glamour