social media is convincing all our kids they are nd?

[AuntMarch]

I've just been sat on the bus and the tiktok videos I'm hearing almost have me seeking a diagnosis.
"ADHD TEST" Put a finger down if you've ever focused on something so much you've lost track of time/ sometimes think you talk too much or not enough.."
it's basically covered every possible behaviour and it's video after video.

it's no wonder every kid thinks they have something.

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

Care to link to your evidence?

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

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.

Just Google it. It’s true.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

This

It's mostly stressed menopausal woman in my experience.

It is most certainly not true that the majority of prisoners are "neurodiverse".

It is true that you can google to find evidence that the majority of prisoners are something, anything, anything at all

You can google to prove the majority of prisoners are dyslexic, you can google to prove the majority or prisoners are victims of child abuse, you can google to prove the majority of prisoners are convicted because of cannabis, or you can google to prove the majority of prisoners are psychopaths.

What is true is that the majority of prisoners are disadvantaged in some way, but it is absolutely not true at all that the majority are neurodiverse.

I teach in prison, and and levels of ADHD are lower in a prison classroom than in a comprehensive classroom, largely because prisoners are older, and many of the behaviours and symptoms associated with ADHD disappear with age.

If someone with ASD chooses to break the law they go to prison same as anyone else - you might say they are more likely to choose to, but it is still a choice.

I would say I see a lot of injustice in prison, in that neglected children not taught right from wrong, children not encouraged to do well in school, children from families where parents are abusing alcohol and drugs, many many of our young people are born into situations where prison is a far more likely outcome for them from the day they enter the world.

"neurodiversity" is not a factor in that in itself, beyond the fact that the word can and is stretched to cover behaviour problems linked to trauma and neglect

Government figures.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/greater-support-for-neurodivergent-offenders-in-bid-to-cut-crime

That certainly wasn't my intention, I posted because I thought it was disgusting how tiktok creators are pushing completely typical behaviours as symptoms. Anti tiktok, not anti diagnosing! I have seen how hard parents have to fight to get support.

I've never used tiktok and my child is young enough it hasn't been an issue here yet, but have of course read about it and it still surprised me how it was video after video saying the same, in my opinion harmful, things.

I was about to write that I can't believe there are so many people perpetuating myths surrounding ND but I actually can. The likes of the daily fail are full of it each and every day!

Think you're autistic? Take this test. Next headline ' Government overspend on PIP benefits due to the increase in ASD diagnosis'!

The scandal of autistic people given top of the range cars on PIP!

You get the jist..........

Getting back to the OP of social media fuelling self diagnosis, yes it's a problem. A huge one. And calling yourself 'neurospicy' or any other self diagnosed label is also a problem. It's become a trend and it needs to stop.

N.B. I am the parent of a (diagnosed) autistic young person who struggles through life. I cannot work due to his needs and severe mental health issues and it puts a huge strain on our family.

I think, in many cases, it's not being done deliberately. I think life is hard for a lot of people (even well-off people!). I think it's a scary time to be alive, with war, global warming, unrest etc, the cost of living crisis. There is a constant news cycle to remind you of all the things out of your control that are going on and 24/7 social media to tell you how you don't measure up. I think a huge number of people are feeling out of control and registering it as a "me" problem. I.e., everyone else is coping, there must be something wrong with me that I'm not able to.

Humans by their nature are always looking for some bigger meaning or reason to things, it's why we invented religion, and why so many cults manage to survive. I think the "diagnosis crisis" is more of the same, it's easier than accepting everything is shit and there's nothing you can do about it.

My friend told me she has auditory processing disorder. Symptom = distracted by background noise. So, just like the vast majority of us

I worry that people who really need assessment, support and understanding don't get it cos too many people joining queue

You need to educate yourself better. ND is hugely over represented in prison for women and men with over half suspected to have a ND as opposed to 15% of the population. ADHD numbers alone are 25% in prison which is well over the 3% in schools. IF you are teaching in prisons you should know that.

Oh come on you knew exactly what you were doing were doing. And you apparantly were sitting close enough next to a young person that you could hear in detail every video on their phone. On a crowded bus that would be impossible without earphones which young people all wear.

I think it's probably the opposite my son was diagnosed at three becsuse it was very clear he wss autistic we slso have had lots of services involved becsuse of his complex needs and now ,get a package of respite care ( although it's taken years) which just wouldn't be available unfortunately to those with less complex needs.

I’m autistic and was diagnosed earlier this year at 36.

One of the reasons I was “missed” for so long is because autism runs in my family so nobody realised it was autism because they all behaved the same way as me and thought it was normal…

It took multiple GP visits, burnouts, and medications before I got “lucky” and my current GP realised I wasn’t actually depressed and was just suffering with repeated autistic burnout.

Nobody who is mentally healthy would ever want to be autistic. It impacts my life every single day and is hugely, hugely limiting.

Given "ND" is in itself a totally invented social media word.......

exactly like everybody to some extent.... If you are NOT distracted by background noise that is called "hyperfocus" and is a sign of being ND.........

This!
I wish TikTok had been around earlier. My daughter ended up trying to take her own life and sinking into anorexia( which is linked to autism) before she got diagnosed with her autism and adhd. She was always in trouble at primary school for lack of focus, day dreaming and being unable to sit still and roaming round the classroom. She hid the anxiety and depression that came with both.If she’d been a boy and presented with aggression, open deviance etc she’d have been picked up a lot earlier. I had to fight for her significant dyspraxia to be recognised and my concerns re all the above were ignored, she just got yelled at during PE instead. All of this is so common with girls and isn’t ok.

Better awareness would have got my duagnosed diagnosed sooner and a descent into mental illness avoided. So glad young people are better informed now.