‘We don’t realize how much we hold inside!’: In a London park, dozens of young people gathered to scream their hearts out and release their tension, a phenomenon that has gone viral on TikTok.

The participants, most of them in their 20s, had met on Saturday at the top of Hampstead Heath, in the west of the capital. They waited until Mona Sharif, the organizer of this “Scream Club”, gave the signal, then started screaming.

“This draws inspiration from group therapy, but also from scream therapy, where people express frustrations that they can’t really put into words,” the 26-year-old content creator told AFP.

It counts to three and everyone starts shouting loudly while recording the whole experience on their mobile phones as bystanders look on, amused or taken aback by the spectacle.

“It’s therapeutic. We don’t realize how much we hold inside until we let it out,” said Rebecca Drakes, a 23-year-old waitress.

A first “Scream Club” had attracted “a thousand people” to another park a week ago, said Mona Sharif, who couldn’t believe it.

After she saw on TikTok that people were meeting to shout in the US, “I posted a video suggesting we do something similar in London and created a group chat … which a thousand people joined in three days,” she said.

Julia DeWitt, a 29-year-old teacher, was pleased that there were many women, who were often “encouraged to stay calm and collected” and that young people felt more comfortable “talking about feelings and mental health” than older people.

Before they start shouting, participants climb one by one on a bench and talk about their loneliness, their difficulties in finding their place in society, or even what angers them in the news, with the encouragement of the group.

According to a YouGov poll for UCL University, published last September, two-thirds of young people (16-25) in Britain experience or have experienced mental health problems, mainly linked to their studies or financial problems.

This club also allows them to meet and hang out, in a capital city where many people “feel lonely and find it difficult to make friends”, Mona Sharif points out.