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

I do find this interesting. I have two autistic teens. One doesn't identify as autistic the other does. Both are diagnosed.

I think it is now seen as somewhat cool to be neurodiverse and my DD has embraced it. My son just wants to be like everyone else (NT).

My daughter has several other diagnoses and whilst it is great that she feels able to talk about them and does not see them as negatives it does seem to overtake our conversations sometimes.

Definitely the internet has a lot to answer for both for positives and negatives.

My teen DD did this. And for a hot second we believed it. We brought her to a therapist who believed her immediately and wanted serious meds prescribed. A psychiatrist friend cautioned us to get another opinion. The second opinion didn't agree with the diagnosis. So, we found another therapist who was wonderful and simply talked her through why she felt she had x conditions (of course, it had morphed from 1 into many). Within 6 months DD no longer believed she had any pathologies. A big part of her therapy was getting off social media.

A comment from the second psychiatrist has always stuck with me, "behavior and emotions in adolescence can mimic psychiatric conditions but we can't know for sure until they grow up or we watch them over time." In other words, our DD was behaving and feeling normally for a teenager.

She's now a young adult and has no mental health diagnosis. She's doing well.

Well if Camhs was fit for purpose this wouldn't be anywhere near as much of an issue.

How lucky for her that you listened to your friend!

I have watched my teen go through a worrying patch of fragile mental health. But it was a commonality with all their friends. The group had glamourised fragile mental health and were mostly trans calling out everyone they knew for hate. My teen just got so over the drama that they moved away from the group and found within about a month that they were feeling so much more positive about life and themselves.

It is heartbreaking that some teens have to detach from friends to improve their mental health, but it is actually a good lesson. I wish I had learned it at 15!

It makes a change from self-diagnosing autism.

Helleofabore happy to hear your child figured it out! My daughter similarly moved away from friends who were "toxic" and that helped her immensely.

I do wonder about professional over diagnosing, considering our experience with DD. I have no professional nor much personal experience with psychiatry so I hate to speculate, but my friend who does feels a lot of people are over medicated. She no longer practices, which is a shame.

It's a perfect conflation of so many current and under addressed issues:

1. Competition for resources- healthcare but also for adult attention (adults are drained trying to keep heads above water materially) - if I am diagnosed I get more!
2. A more competitive, unequal and therefore hierarchical, society - if I am special my status increases!
3. Lack of social security, decent work, supportive structures - I can join this loud community just by saying so!

And so on... To be honest I am surprised it isn't even more common, sounds quite appealing even to rational old me.

Oh that buggered up the formatting but hopefully you get the gist.

I have found this with my own child - I am still waiting for services for tourettes and have been told that this is because there are so many presenting, particularly in teenage years and girls.

Tourettes does not tend to arise in teenage years for most, and it is mostly in boys. My child’s tourettes causes physical harm to him, is quite different from those presenting in social media, and arguable should be prioritised.

I have noticed this in the Twitter profiles of many young people, and also of some older people. A long list of various mental health conditions are listed, but the person doesn't seem to tweet on any of those or retweet anything to do with the conditions.

@WinterSnowing I find your response very telling. Some people feel that they can belittle and ignore the majority of a whole section of society just because of a few idiots. Most autistic people are perfectly happy to let anyone chose their own terminology, even the term Asperger's is widely accepted despite it's very problematic origins.

We would just like to let people know that the majority of us prefer identity first language. This is not because autism is our entire identity, it is because it is a very important part of our identity that we want to be recognised. We are not trying to stamp out discussion, we are trying to be heard, which for a group that contains so many non-speaking people is very important.

Autistic people get to chose their own terminology and you do not get to tell us why we are doing it.

@orbitalcrisis I am not telling anyone what they should call themselves, but then neither should you, that is part of my point. You can’t speak for the whole autistic community, no one can and no one should as it becomes a doctrine.

i agree with Dolphin Wars. Dd is self harming and the Camhs helpline and the gp agreed she needed a referral but when the Camhs lady called me she basically said “what do you want Camhs to do about it” and tried to push dd back to school counselling. Dd has self diagnosed a lot of conditions and I think labels really help that generation. I do suspect asd and am wondering if it would be worth getting an assessment.

@Stopsnowing Yes, a diagnosis is hugely helpful to any autistic person of any generation. I'm in my 40s and was not diagnosed until a couple of years ago, not knowing what was wrong with me had a massive negative effect on my life and I was suicidal and self harming for decades. Language is labels, without labels we can't communicate.