Teenagers are self-diagnosing mental health problems because of social media

It's nothing new and as above, it's not just teenagers. Know so many adults who self diagnose and claim it's just as valid as those of us with a diagnosis

I don't think it is just teenagers

The number of adults I hear talking about "being on the spectrum" or "discovering their ADHD" is staggering

It is like a new religion

Been through this with my DD. She self diagnosed with ADHD.

It's a difficult balance to try and let them know that you are taking seriously what they are saying without just dismissing them.

I think I got there with DD. She's thankfully pretty sensible. 🤞🏻

Concurrent to this, disability activism seems to have come full circle with language preference. I have witnessed well meaning people being torn down online for using phrases akin to "person with autism" instead of "autistic person". Apparently identity first is now the correct way to phrase it.

This is certainly a fairly recent change and in m to experience one that a great many people with diagnoses and their families have not caught up with.

In some ways it's linguistically easier (although not in the case of my own condition) but the use of the term "identity" concerns me.

The truth is, we all know that this is exactly what's happening with the trans craze among young women. But people are still too afraid to say so.

Just me wondering as there is no way to know for real but I wonder how many parents find themselves with a child as described in the linked article and either are incapable of making the link, or refuse to make the link because then they would be required to look inward and accept that their sometimes lax parenting and allowance of unfettered internet access, (because it kept them quiet and you didn't actually have to do the hard parenting bit) has actually in some way contributed to the now distressed child in front of them.

It must be much easier to go no nothing to do with social media my child must really have this issue.

now the trans thing is much bigger than just the internet so is slightly different. But the tourettes thing is going to be purely social media driven, it's not going to be a subject taught in class. So if it can do that to some kids and cause them to develop ticks of course social media is going to feed into the distress kid young kids going through puberty and lead them to think they are trans when they really aren't.

The refusal to accept and admit there will be a link isn't helping any of these children

Excellent article. This was easily predictable several years ago - not necessarily wrt the issues mentioned such as Tourette’s, but with any “diagnosis”.

The article studiously avoids the T issue but it’s glaringly present by omission.

T has been elevated to a diagnosis, to a “thing” that you can be born with 🤪 It’s social contagion now in the hands of governments hellbent on getting their own political agenda across by appealing to the yoof. Doesn’t Nicola want the voting age to be lowered to 16?

I think this is a huge problem and isn’t being addressed honestly and openly.

There is a strange dual push that teenagers who have ‘identified’ through social media/contagion, with issues such as Tourette’s, mental health, neurodivergence, transgender are an ‘identity’ or ‘social constructs’ - and therefore there is a fierce denial that there is anything negative or medical.

And yet these newly identified teenagers are also strongly pushing for medical diagnosis and medical treatment often. This is at odds with the push that it is being part of a tribe or identity, wholly positive.

My DS has Tourette’s but there is a log jam in services at the moment because of an increase in referrals during the pandemic - many social media driven. There is pressure on professionals to treat those with social media driven tics ‘as seriously’ as those with tics, and give services as if there is no social media influence, or even to suggest that this be a factor. I’ve heard a professional say that they walk on eggshells around this. Very similar to trans issues where there is a strong push to unquestionally validate, and give a lot of services without considering whether this is really the fairly rare gender dysmorphia, a conflation of the two.

Indeed online if you say you are autistic, then the online community is very supportive that you are, even without a diagnosis. And there is increased pressure on professionals to diagnose wider and wider in all of this issues. Resulting in stretching of diagnosis so that they are now almost meaningless. This has quite big impacts on allocation of services.

It also leads teenagers down rabbit holes where at a critical time their identity has to be wrapped around a ‘thing’ rather than growing naturally and just experimenting with who they are. Of course it has always existed, mainly called ‘hysteria’ in centuries past where whole villages would come down with a mystery sickness for example. But now it’s very focused in early teens, coinciding with onset of social media, in girls and often backed by parents to lead into services and interventions. I think it’s all a mess!

In my DS's tourettes group this has been known and talked about for years they even have 2 different treatment pathways 1 for "classic " tourettes which is mainly coping strategies and in the more severe cases medication to alleviate the symptoms as there is no cure. Then there is the pathway for the "new variant" tourettes which is treated similarly to OCD and almost always results in a complete cure.
This two pathway treatment system has been developed because the Dr's have been left in charge of treatment rather than extremist pressure groups and is exactly what should have been done when it comes to ROGD vs "traditional " gender dysphoria rather than allowing the extremists to bully the Dr's into a one size fits no one fiasco that we currently have.

Neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan writes about this in her book ‘The Sleeping Beauties’. She explores a group of young girls in USA who developed a Tourette's-akin disorder that spread amongst them with a remarkable degree of consistency of symptoms, far more so than people with a confirmed diagnosis of Tourette's.

Social contagion has been a thing for years, even before the internet.

Tiktok Tourette’s affected several girls in my son’s school year, also rates of self ID’d adhd and ASD shot up.
The resources used to assess many of these teens - most found to not have the developmental history or meet the criteria for a diagnosis - takes away from those genuinely needing diagnosis and pushes up the waiting times (assessment for ASD is officially 2.5 years here, but in reality is closer to 4).

DD had dreadful MH issues at school (she’s now diagnosed ASD), and I noticed that the more schools try to discuss MH in a well meaning way (I believe this was brought in to try to take the pressure off underfunded camhs? And IMO has backfired) to make sure children are aware of it and know how to access help, the more children seem to incorporate those MH issues into their identity, and it becomes a big competitive mess.

DD has never identified out of her sex, but many other issues follow a very similar pattern (like eating disorder, body dysmorphia, OCD, anxiety), but luckily aren’t affirmed. In a struggling autistic girl way dd has wholly embraced the identity of mental illness, in the same way that autistic girls often embrace transness. There is the same suggestibility around it all.

SM (and schools) is a nightmare for placing these seeds into young people’s heads (especially autistic ones are too open to this kind of grooming, well intentioned or not).

Short of keeping teens off sm altogether I don’t know what the answer is.

The tick thing and social contagion has been discussed previously.

There was a piece about this kind of thing on Radio 4 a few weeks ago but it was more about depression and that talking about MH is obviously positive in many ways, but it leads to some young people self diagnosing normal and short term anxiety or feelings of sadness as something more serious. That then makes it more difficult for genuine sufferers to be recognised and helped and minimises their experience.

This has been happening since mid 2000s when MySpace was a thing but more of a mainstream problem now.

I blame the likes of tiktok, everyone seems to think they have bipolar, autism/adhd (I know this isn't mental health I have diagnosed autism!), etc etc.
I'm all for raising awareness but kids are so easily influenced these days.