He Has 97 Mental Illnesses

About

He Has 97 Mental Illnesses is a catchphrase used in a series of exploitable image macros of people, characters and animals with the caption, "He has 97 mental illnesses and is banned from most public spaces." The caption has been commonly used between 2020 and 2022.

Origin

On August 23rd, 2020, iFunny^[1] user MentalMenstruation posted an image of a hyena with the caption, "He has 97 mental illnesses and is banned from most public spaces" (shown below). The image gained over 69 likes in two years. While it appears the earliest extant version of the meme, it is possible it is not the original version.

Spread

The caption began growing more prevalent in 2021 as people altered the image to include numerous characters and animals. On April 23rd, 2021, Twitter account @reactjpg^[2] posted a variation with "Scraggly" the cat, gaining over 40 retweets and 250 likes in 18 months (shown below, left). On February 5th, 2021, Redditor DehBoi2000^[3] posted a variation with Jerma, gaining over 500 points in /r/jerma985 in nearly two years (shown below, right).

The meme continued seeing use in 2022 as it spread further online. On November 29th, 2022, Twitter user @SoulSurVGC^[4] posted a variation using the Pokémon Tinkaton, gaining over 490 retweets and 2,200 likes in one day (shown below, left). On November 18th, Twitter user @AsphodelFields^[5] posted an example using Ghost and the Ghost Staring meme format (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References