Happy Thursday!

I have a bit of a dark one for you today. When the astrology influencer MysticxLipstick—real name Danielle Johnson—made the news for committing horrific crimes two years ago, I noticed an interesting shift in the way we talk about mental health and spirituality online. I think we’ve all probably heard the term spiritual psychosis at this point. But at the time, it was a term that was just beginning to emerge, being wielded a lot in Johnson’s case because of sensational spiritual practices and rhetoric that she had engaged in before her death. 

I bring this up now because of Investigation Discovery's recent docuseries about the case, which caused me to reflect on this term that we’ve seen quite a lot in recent years. More on that below, subscribe to the Yapper tier so you don’t miss it. 

Astrology influencer Danielle Johnson, better known as MysticxLipstick, made headlines for committing a double murder-suicide back in April 2024, leaving behind only posts expressing fear of spiritual warfare due to the impending solar eclipse. As a result of her actions, she killed her partner Jaelen Chaney, their 8-month-old daughter Solé, and herself. She also attempted to kill her then-9-year-old, who survived. 

This case has been subject to renewed interest online because Investigation Discovery recently released a documentary about Johnson as part of their series Deadly Influence: The Social Media Murders, focused on true crime stories stemming from the internet. The episode, released on July 13, focused a lot on Johnson’s descent into paranoia and fear that people were trying to tear her down—not an uncommon experience among influencers who are exposed to thousands of critical eyes each day—which subsequently led her down a path of dark magic. 

Whether or not you believe that black magic was the root of her downward spiral, which many people online did at the time, this tragedy did leave an unexpected impact on internet culture. It inadvertently raised our collective interest and awareness in spiritual psychosis. 

Spiritual psychosis is not a formal diagnosis, emerging as a relatively new psychological descriptor around the time of Johnson’s case. In fact, Google Trends shows that searches for the term peaked around the time of her crimes, indicating that her story had helped give rise to this pop psychology term. The experience involves psychotic symptoms—such as hallucinations, paranoia or personality changes—and delusional spiritual beliefs that are not grounded in reality, according to BetterHelp.

While the typical satanic panic response proliferated after the news of Johnson’s crimes was made public (as evidenced by the media focus on her occultist practices), I recall many people also taking a sympathetic approach to the incident. Spiritual psychosis suddenly became the go-to diagnosis from armchair psychologists online.