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

[RoyalCorgi]

New piece of research finds, surprise, surprise, that teenagers are going on social media and diagnosing themselves with mental health problems.

The article gives a number of examples, but not the obvious one.

www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jan/09/urgent-need-to-understand-link-between-teens-self-diagnosing-disorders-and-social-media-use-experts-say

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.

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.

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.

It's interesting that it does mention gender identity briefly, and several of the references also mention gender identity. I suspect they didn't make it a principal focus of the paper because they feared a backlash.

I thought this in particular was a very striking observation:

"More broadly, there has been a recognition of vast online ‘neurodivergence’ ecosystem in which classical mental illness symptoms and diagnoses are viewed less as mental health concerns that require professional attention, but rather as consumer identities or character traits that make individuals sharper and more interesting than others around them."

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.

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

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.

I've read it - it's a great book, very well worth reading.

Of course she doesn't mention the gender identity contagion either.

It seems to me that we are in an insane situation now where mental health professionals know 1) that social media is driving a lot of self-diagnosed conditions in young people 2) that that lots of young people, especially girls, are suddenly identifying as transgender.

They know that 1) and 2) are linked, of course they do, but they are presumably frightened to say so. And so we are in a ludicrous situation where responsible adults are pretending that these girls are really boys born in the wrong body.

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.

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!

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?

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

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.

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. 🤞🏻

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

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

Sometimes it is actually the case though! As a person who reached adulthood before working out I was neurodiverse, I can confirm that my life had all but completely unravelled. There are many reasons it might not be picked up in childhood, sex being one.

My DD is diagnosed dyspraxic. She started secondary and has made a number of ND friends. She started wearing a disability lanyard and then She came home telling me she needed an assessment as she thought she was autistic (she had an all round assesment in primary and there was no cause for concern) She and a friend spend time making cards for their sunflower lanyards listing all their symptoms.

I want to support her but equally this has only really kicked off in secondary. I don't know if she just feels more comfortable being open about it (which is great) but how do I know what is real and how much is feeding off other people. One of her friends has school refusal issues and I really want to ensure we don't go down that path.

“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”

Not what you’ve asked, but I most definitely recognise it in dd.
She is autistic, which I’m sure is at the root of all the MH issues, and the obsessive nature, but I’m 99% certain that the issues are largely identity led, driven by competitive mental illness amongst her peers when she was still at school.
I’m sure there are parents who struggle to recognise it, or who validate it, because these issues often come with suicide threats (rather like trans issues), and it’s very difficult to stay rational when your child is threatening to kill themselves. It takes a while to understand and to disengage from it all. Im sure part of the problem is the approach from MH services which requires the patient to reflect on themselves and their issues - I’ve seen how damaging this can be. In most cases teenagers need to do the opposite, focus on anything other than themselves and how shit they feel.

I am also autistic and clearly
remember very intense feelings of not being right as a teenager, wrong body, wrong life etc. Luckily at that time we weren’t overly encouraged to focus as much on ourselves as teenagers are now, and no one took my feelings seriously - which in hindsight is what I needed - no teen needs their fixated issue validated, that helps no one.

@FunnyTalks The preferred language thing came up because rather than telling people the best language to use, they actually asked autistic people what they prefer. It wasn't full circle, they'd never been asked before. But tearing people down for using language that many autistic people use is not on, pointing out what the majority prefer can be helpful though. It even happens in the autism community, it's considered better to tell people so they don't inadvertently upset anyone, but as with everything, some people do take these things too far.

For me the key is that those self identifying do not require a lions share of services or should be centering energy, resources and care on those who self identify.

Whether this is autism, transgender, tourettes.

I would have no problem with teenagers or adults thinking about ‘I might have ADHD traits or autistic traits, or I might feel quite more like a man sometimes’. These are all useful ways to explore ourselves, to think, experiment, find who we are.

But what is happening is that there is a very fierce ‘ownership’ and pushing of self identification as the most important, the most needing of the others validation and also of resources. Resources, time and space that are literally being taken from others who do need it, most of the time far more than those who self identify. This is true of every area:

• A man who wants to dress as a woman, that’s fine. However it doesn’t stop there, they need to BE a woman, in every sense, including going into women only areas because apparently their self identification is more important than women’s needs.
• A teenager or adult who self identifies as autistic. Again, this in a way should be fine, except again and again this seems to be centering autism on a particular presentation of functioning people who have had no developmental delays in language or motor skills. If any parent dares to suggest that this is less severe this is met by fierce condemnation. It’s all OK as long as the terminology is right, but honestly no one seems to care about the kids who can’t speak who still aren’t getting services, no one fights or talks about them.

People are taking onboard identities that are to do with often quite serious mental health issues, or developmental issues, and running with their version of them but insisting that their version is now the most important one.

I find the terminology very telling. Autistic is some people’s main identity and therefore the need to be ‘autistic person’ rather than person with autism. However there has never been a consensus on this, yet the ‘autistic person’ is pushed as if it what everyone wants, because autism as identity first is what the social media, self identity, able to articulate and function adult community has pushed for. It has become more of a closed ‘tribe’ where you are either IN or OUT (see all the actually autistic and autistic only people lobby) where terminology leads, who have to be autistic to join. Open, challenging discourse is discouraged and stamped out.

It is similar with transgender. There is a HUGE push for language and terminology. Cisgender, use of pronouns, compelled speech. This seems to be very, very important and so much so that workplaces are insisting on this terminology. And the terminology is everywhere and now quite complex. I actually have no idea about half of it, but as a teenager growing up in social media if you don’t know what non binary is, or pan gender or whatever, if you can’t use interchangeable pronouns, then you are called out and ridiculed. Not part of ‘the group’. Workplaces and even the census now carries this terminology.

Words have power, and we are giving power to those groups demanding validation through the use of words.

A friends DD has been undergoing testing for autism. She announced to her class that she had several other conditions and was later found to be watching various social media channels and mimicking they symptoms. One minute she would be sat chatting with friends and the next would be having a panic attack or making noises saying it was Tourette’s.

Mine do no use any Sm other than to arrange a drink etc with close mates
They just do not get it at all

This has been happening since the Tumblr days.

“A teenager or adult who self identifies as autistic. Again, this in a way should be fine, except again and again this seems to be centering autism on a particular presentation of functioning people who have had no developmental delays in language or motor skills. If any parent dares to suggest that this is less severe this is met by fierce condemnation. It’s all OK as long as the terminology is right, but honestly no one seems to care about the kids who can’t speak who still aren’t getting services, no one fights or talks about them.”

I disagree with this part to an extent.
Autism isn’t just about language or motor skills delays, many autistic people, particularly women, spoke early, many of us have mild motor skills issues but not to the extent where they could be recognised - remember we’re still at a point where many teachers don’t believe a child could be autistic because they’re not Rain Man.

Autism assessment looks at social development, social interaction amongst others.
Whilst I agree that tiktok identity diagnoses are annoying, take up resources etc, there are many undiagnosed women out there who, until it was made mainstream, had no idea that a) women could be autistic, or b) their disabling traits could be anything other than laziness or uselessness (as we’re often brought up to think).

I didn’t realise I could be autistic until my son was assessed, I then realised that I was too - the self ID bit for women particularly is inevitable - however I could not call myself autistic or allow myself any slack or strategies to help until I was diagnosed. I can assure you though, despite no language delays it is disabling, and you do a disservice to many autistics to suggest otherwise.