social media is convincing all our kids they are nd?

This

It's mostly stressed menopausal woman in my experience.

i was a bit flippant in my last post suggesting psychiatrists are essentially bougie drug dealers, however, there is no biological marker for ASD or ADHD or other ND related disorders like dysgraphia.

to get diagnosed, one must rely on someone to interpret traits, behaviors and personality and slap a label on it. Even if this assessment is in-depth and lengthy, it’s still just a fine-tuning of ever changing categorizations.

unlike blood/scan/urine/exploratory surgery tests for cancer, pregnancy, tumors, diabetes, etc. There’s little risk that one doctor makes an anemia diagnosis and a second thinks, “nah, it’s really Legionnaires disease.”

I have adult friends with successful careers who suddenly discovered at 45! they were ND or ADHD or some combo. Just an easy and legal way to get speed.

frankly, I think it’d be quite easy to convince a psychiatrist I too have ADHD symptoms, but I’m afraid of amphetamine addiction.

Well yes, those social media adhd advertisements, for want of a better description, are ridiculous. But also adhd is still very under-diagnosed, particularly in women. There has been quite a push to get women in for diagnosis.

This is a silly comment, all kinds of weird things have been fashionable accessories over the years, including some which seem like they would be unpleasant.

The thing to me is, there are a wide variety of personality traits, abilities, and characteristics that are within the range of normal.

I am kind of scatty at times, I can mult-task and pick things up very quickly but have a hard time focusing on boring tasks, I get bored easily. This has of course affected my life, some things I thought I wanted to do as a young person I realised I was ill-suited for, in a few cases I even just failed at them.

My sister, on the other hand, is good at a lot of the things I'm bad at, she isn't quite as creative in her thinking but she can apply steady work to things in a way I can't and on many tasks can accomplish more. She's done well at things I'd struggle with.

I have a cousin who is quite slow, and can't manage many of those kinds of things but she is cheerful and good with people. It took her a while to find a job that suited, many she couldn't do.

Sure, you could do brain studies or whatever and perhaps find out why we are all differernt. But that's not a diagnosis, because none of us are ill or have a condition, we are just differernt people with differernt personalities and abilities.

So many people now seem to think that their personality requires some kind of diagnosis.

Just Google it. It’s true.

Well I’m sure for people who are struggling with something or even have a different but undiagnosed health condition, it is possible to convince themselves that they have ADHD or autism when they don’t. There is a lot of
overlap with other types of problems and it is obviously comforting to find an explanation. However, it is quite scary to ‘come out’ even when formally diagnosed (you only have to read this thread to see that many people think it’s just a trend or an excuse) so I would think that most undiagnosed people who say openly that they think they are ND, probably are. in the end, most people don’t have much alternative other than to ‘self diagnose’ because you wait years for an appointment.

Tiktok is terrible for this stuff and the algorithm gets you i was drawn in for a while until I changed my algorithm.

Care to link to your evidence?

Well parents and kids need to use their brains and stop living their life by social media, engage brain is always the first step

I'm not sure we do any more. My work had a display about it and there were about a dozen conditions coming under it including anxiety. It was so wide it was pretty meaningless.

You can say that about any condition. There are thresholds and screening processes.

At the end of the day if a young person looks up autism and has social/ communication struggles, alongside repetitive and restrictive behaviours and sensory difficulties that are hugely impacting life then yes they’d be wise to look into it. They will then go through a screening process before the diagnosis process.

Tough luck if that bothers you.

I had adhd diagnosed at the age of 40 by the nhs. It was a relief to finally have answers. I did a degree by the skin of my teeth, I struggle With money, housework and I don’t drive. On the plus side I am incredibly creative and can do amazing things when I hyperfocus.

In the 80s my parents took me for multiple appointments but in the UK it wasn’t recognised until the 90s.

I couldn’t be more middle class and did several hours of sports a week.

The assessment process was extremely rigorous and I had to have my husband sit me explaining all my issues which was hard. Thankfully my parents had kept all my old school reports which were full of really harsh 80s descriptions of how little I could focus!

I am glad there is more awareness but it does frustrate me when people self diagnose and say they are as fact.

Nobody is talking about people with a formal diagnosis. The OP was about people diagnosing themselves based on online quizzes and TikTok checklists.

And it is indeed the exact same people who were “a little bit OCD” twenty years ago.

I don't think it's a myth.

People do it subconsciously with more illnesses than ASD/ADHD.

People will try to beat the system. In the 90s I was talking to a physiotherapist who was telling me about a young girl they'd had a few years back, who had injured her knee in a car accident. Every time she tried to get her to do any movement she screamed in pain and flinched away.
At the third session, her dm had to go to the toilet mid-appointment, and the physiotherapist said to the young girl in desperation "how can I help you to try to do the exercises?"
The girl replied totally straight: "I'm not going to do them because my mum says that if I show I can move my knee I won't get as much compensation money."
So people will do their best to use what they can get out of situations; that's not a new thing.

But actually I wasn't talking about that. I was talking more about the power of the mind when people read about conditions, even more so if they think they might have it - and people will research into it.

When dd was about 12yo she came to me and said she thought she had a particular physical ailment. I know a little about this, and I said straight off, that I didn't think she did, why did she think that? She gave me a mild symptom that could show the ailment, but only in conjunction with other much worse symptoms.
About three or four days later she came to me saying that she was sure she had the illness, and listed several of the main symptoms. Obviously I was more worried, and made a doctor's appointment.
That evening her internet report came through and I noticed that she'd been on a blog for this illness. So I went onto them and found her list of ailments were exactly as listed - there were other symptoms which were not listed, which she also hadn't had.
When we got to see the doctor he confirmed absolutely that she didn't have it through a test, he gave medication for the milder symptom and the other symptoms vanished before we left the surgery never to return.

The power of the mind can be very strong, and I think the natural thing for a young person to do if they are wondering if they have ASD or ADHD is to research it, which then lays them open to feeling they have the symptoms even if they hadn't noticed them before - even more so than a physical ailment.

It really does not. Threads like this and posts like yours do that.

Exactly this. It’s like when people say they are allergic to a food when in reality they don’t like it, or say they are depressed when they are just a bit sad, muddies the water for people with a genuine need.

You have given me some food for thought, but where did you get ‘the majority of prisoners are ND’ from? Prisoners where? What nature of crime? Length of sentence? What nature of ND? Percentages?

It can feel as though people are appropriating disability. They can choose to identify into it, call themselves neurospicy and ‘a bit ADHD’, while living a rich work, social and family life. Meanwhile, there are people who don’t get to identify out of their disabilities, people who have unmet needs or who can’t advocate for themselves. It is nuanced - there are people who have overcome huge demons and inner struggles and I wouldn’t want to dismiss that. But I don’t think it helps to describe so many behaviours in a medical way which may make teenagers fix into an identity which might not help them in the long run.

I wasn’t aware of any neurodiverse people growing up. Every other post of mumsnet seems to have a Sen child. It’s scary.

You are saying all autistic brains are very intelligent which is just not true.

I don’t think you’re understanding what I’m saying.

This is such crap.

My dd was mute and too anxious to go to school. Thank fuck she didn’t go to yours. I was a teacher too!

You bet l was a pushy mother when she was traumatised by school.

I assure you ,you are wrong
My son goes to a school for children with severe to profound learning disabilities he has a diagnosis of autism aa do most of the kids there
It is so ignorant of you to try an minimise his disabilities and say he is very intelligent.