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this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2024
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You probably don't want to hear this but maybe self-diagnosis among youth is getting out of hand. Maybe in your desire to feel special and explain your limitations has lead you to the conclusion that no normal person could possibly be as neuro-atypical as you.
It's a byproduct of our lack of a mental health care system. While I do agree that it can be dangerous, self-diagnosis is necessary because there is no mental health system in place. Be it America or Canada, mental health is not considered Healthcare. Therefore, the only way for a person to explore mental health related issues is for them to diagnose themselves first, and then go exploring for professional perspective afterwards.
Claiming that self diagnosis is "seeking special treatment" is incredibly cynical. Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence. People aren't wrong for taking part in self-analysis. Examining your behavior and seeking to understand why you act the way you act is how you learn to reflect on your behavior and become a better person as you age. If your initial reaction to this post is to assume a malicious motive, then you could do with some self analysis as well. Why do you think you automatically assumed the worst of reasonings behind self diagnosis? That's something that may be with exploring about yourself.
Self-Diagnosis is the first step in that process. Until mental health care is considered Healthcare, something our General health practitioners prioritize just as much as physical health, self-diagnosis is necessary.
I guess it could be that way for the young. I'm 53 and I had months of anxiety attacks when I started considering the reason why I've always had trouble with certain types of people was that I was autistic and they the worst kind of neurotypical.
The last thing I felt was 'special'.
What was it specifically about this notion that gave you anxiety attacks?
When I learned I was autistic at age 30, it didn't really affect me much because I knew my overall life game hadn't changed. I was still the same person with the same skills, facing the same reality, just with a new label.
Were you afraid people would see you differently and give you less respect? Or did you think you were going to psych yourself out, or that you had a hidden disadvantage? Or something else?
The anxiety came from the idea of what others would think. This goes with the abuse that I went through with my parents. They were always worried about what others would think. Turns out several people over the years tried to get them to have me checked out. They let the shame of what I might be prevent them from helping me.
I was 39 when I started considering it. My son had been diagnosed and I was reading a huge amounts of information on autism. So many things in the books perfectly described the problems I had always had. I had already been diagnosed with ADHD and unfortunately nothing I could take for it worked. My parents who I stupidly still trusted were completely against me getting any help. They didn't like my son taking Adderall. The more I questioned it the more belligerent they became with me. I finally cut contact with them and started getting help. Turns out they were always aware of my difficulties and somehow my getting help would hurt them. They were/are narcissists. Now I use them as a example of what not to be. These days I don't care what others think of me. I'm just thankful I didn't become them. I broke the cycle for myself and most of all for my kids. I would rather my son be happy than spend every day masked up and hurting inside.
Yeah, I agree. This isn't to say that everyone who self-diagnosis is wrong, but it feels like everyone today needs to have some mental illness or disorder. I don't think it's healthy. Every person is different. Being different doesn't mean you have an actual disorder that would need treatment or special care. It really only serves to diminish the response to real disorders.
as someone in a position to offer professional diagnoses, here's my perspective - diagnostic labels can be useful, and i view them mostly as tools. their utility to me might be to communicate to another professional a cluster of traits, behaviors, indicators i'm seeing in short-hand. it might be helpful in determining which approaches could bring relief.
it can also be helpful in validating an individual's subjective experiences, like "oh, everything is hard right now because i am dealing with depression, i'm not actually a worthless piece of shit.'" it's also helpful to me when someone shares a self-diagnosis - i can explore what they think that means, and sometimes they're right on the money. sometimes it means "i don't feel i am coping effectively."
sometimes they're not right, but the label they have adopted can offer hints as to what's not working. a word like autism can mean "i have a hard time connecting to others or communicating," and maybe a another label is more appropriate or maybe the issue is their social environment.
some diagnostic labels can be verified objectively and scientifically, but in practice many are based on self-report/informant-report/observation and best fit. the fact is that diagnosis is often as much art as science when it comes to mental health, and the best diagnosis is the one that leads to improved well-being.
of course, some folks don't like labels at all. "i'm just myself." if they are generally happy, healthy, and functioning well, i don't mind that either.
tldr - diagnostic labels are helpful tools that can be useful in a variety of ways.
caveat - diagnostic labels can be dangerous when they interfere with well-being or efforts toward well-being, or when they are used to harm, control, or oppress.
Thanks for this statement. I read it as "diagnostic labels are a tool supposed to be used in professional communication but it may be harmful when used otherwise".
IMO, much of that harm could be avoided by just not pathologizing and labeling personal caracteristics as "disorders", though, which are characteristics certain societies could greatly benefit from if such people would just be given the right respect and task.
What causes this impression?
Many things. I'm not on TikTok, but my impression go that is there's a lot of self-diagnosis things on there. I know on YouTube I've been recommended self-diagnosis related things for ADHD and ASD. ime pretty confident I don't have ASD and I don't think I have ADHD, but I do have many symptoms of both because most people do.
I know Tumblr had it's own massive mental disorder as a personality trait thing. I never used it, but it always seemed potentially harmful to me. No one should want a mental disorder. They should just have one if they do and handle things as best a possible for them, whatever they have or don't have. It shouldn't really be a point of identification to fit into some in-group.
I think there are a few factors that could create that impression even without the numbers being that high.
On the Internet there are lots of people. Something that affects 20% of the population or even 2% is going to have tons of people available to talk about it.
There has been a push for mental health awareness and understanding for many years now. People are open about it and about relating to others with similar experiences.
The world has been insane lately, especially for young people, and folks are used to complaining online and collectively blowing off steam about all the bullshit.
Plus between everything from income inequality to Covid, mental health issues could actually be on the rise recently.
Also just the culture of lying which can grow or shink in any society, if it grows, will lead to everyone having more anxiety as a result of not being able to trust the information they're getting. People being unreliable, breaking promises, it can all feed on itself. Other's mental illness makes them less predictable, less conducive to support and healthy interaction. So it can spread. There can be epidemics of mental illness too.
Any kind of stress increase can degrade and eventually break a person's mental health. Complexity is a source of stress, and as our own mental health breaks down, and our own ability to be there for others consistently breaks down, we add complexity to their lives.
When others can trust us, we save them mental energy. They can make one plan instead of having to make two -- one for if we fulfill our promises and one for if we don't. And when we can trust others, they save us mental energy in the same way.
So culture and even overall levels of mental illness themselves are inputs into the question "how stressful is it to live in X society?"
I think the inequality feeds into this with a lack of respect. When you have to big groups of people who aren't mixed socially, ie distinct social classes, it can lead to contempt and distrust. That contempt and distrust means we're all surrounded daily by people we can't count on. Situations we can't count on. Jobs that we don't know will be there next month, because what if they break their promise not to lay people off, or they break their promise that "These are your duties: X, Y, Z" and try to add "A, B, and C" to our duties.
Poverty itself is bearable, if the systems one is interacting with are reliable enough that one can know exactly what the relationship between effort and output is going to be. But when those systems change all the time, and the same paycheck could require more and more work to the point we can't keep up, or whole divisions are being shut down or bought out or whatever, or the value of the dollar keeps dropping so the same grocery budget suddenly isn't enough, or the electricity goes off and you can't get your work done, or they suddenly don't have hours for you, those kinds of things are the real source of stress in poverty.
The level of disrespect, manifested in a constantly-changing environment one has to adapt to when poor, in order to keep from getting drastically more poor, the constant changing of thee rules, these are poison for people living on little.
Very well put!
Your conclusion of respect being so central is exactly the conclusion I reached when traveling to Scandinavia as an American. The little differences all over the place have this feel to them - a feeling like “this would never work at home, but why?” But then I realized it was respect. They respect the people & world around them, and in the process respect themselves more as well.
I think we're going to find that neurodivergence is a lot more prevalent than we ever assumed.
Traditionally ND numbers are based on those who are dysfunctional. The ones that get 'seen'. Those of us who are just 'a bit odd' and skate by? Yeah there's a reason why so many of my generation are getting diagnosed in their 30's, 40's, 50's. Because when we were kids if you weren't in a soft helmet and nonverbal you were classified NT. Millenials and genz are paying a lot more attention to their mental health and trashing the stigmas around it and it's a good thing.
What's the worst thing that's gonna happen if we have a higher rate of perceived NDs anyway? Society becomes more accomodating? Oh noooooo
The worst thing that can happen is people who need assistance don't get it, because everyone claims they need it. I don't think that's the most likely outcome, but it is possible.
Everyone is different to some extent, so just being "atypical" doesn't mean you're neuro divergent. I don't have an issue with it in general, but I do have an issue when it starts becoming a personality trait. I saw that happening on Tumblr at least. Teenagers in particular have a hard time fitting in, and they can see this as a way to have an identity that makes them feel like a member of a group. It's a similar appeal to smoking or anything else teenagers tend to do just for the social appeal. Is it unhealthy? Only time will tell.
Extremely unlikely. Assistance isn't handed out like candy, it's notoriously hard to gain.
I mean, everyone gets the flu. Autism is more permanent, but the term "mental disorder" refers to one of many differe disease states, some of which are temporary.
Autism, psychopathy, cluster B personality disorders, these are sort of permanent things.
Depression, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, addiction these sorts of things can be induced by life conditions crossed with mental resources, and later cured completely by changing those two inputs.
(I may sound drawing a very binary line here; my intention is less of a clean division between "permanent" and "temporary" mental illness. I think for example autism can decrease in severity over time, making some of its aspects temporary while other aspects are lifelong)
The only problem with self-diagnosis would be if we give autistics an easier time. If a diagnosis or label of autism leads to less responsibility, that's a problem because it will attract those people who don't want to take responsibility, which is most of us at least at one time or another.
On the other hand, there are things autistic people can really use to help them out. Just like neurotypicals need things autistics don't need, autistics need things neurotypicals don't need.
So it's about correctly identifying what you need in life.
The key dividing line between the important categories is: things an autistic truly needs and truly benefits from, and things that are nice to have but which autistics don't actually need, or actually benefit from.
Clear articulation and someone willing to answer questions without knowing how the question connects to the context, I think is helpful for an autistic person.
An easier ladder to climb, less responsibility, and treatment as if they're a child might be attractive in some cases, but it's not something autistics really benefit from or need.
So if we properly respond to a label of autism with only the things that actually help, there will be no incentive to convince oneself of being autistic.
Sort of like how insulin isn't really that helpful for non-diabetics. And we don't give diabetic people special social status. We give them insulin. Because our set of appropriations to a diabetic person is well-organized and contains only the things that truly help with the things unique to diabetes, and not more than that, we don't really have to worry about people self-diagnosing as diabetic.
Now, the thing is, something like "attention" or "acceptance into the group" is something that we tend to give people who have a label like autistic, these days. Does that mean we should take these things away from autistics, other neuro-atypicals, etc? No. It means that those things are useful to everybody, so we should give them to everybody. Even the really normal people who aren't in any marginal group.
The problem is that we have a mismatch between what is needed and helpful, and what we provide to people. That creates an incentive to report or perceive things differently than reality.
In an Idealistic Utopia I expect psychotherapeutic drugs to only be assigned as needed, but for the world we live in they hand out Ritalin and Stimulants like Amphetamine to the point of shortages.
I agree with you. I was diagnosed a few years ago with autism and I now look back with a feeling of second-hand embarrassment. I found myself in a phase where I needed to explain why I feel so different to others, I spent hours reading up on autism and other disorders, and might have subconsciously “hoped” I had the disorder. I am actively trying to get rid of the diagnosis. I know this isn’t a generalised statement I can make and apply to every single person who suspects they might suffer of something, but the popularised liberal concept of self-diagnosing and using shitty online quizzes to prove so is ridiculous. +I know some people won’t like this comment, but the other side ought to be heard too.
Congratulations, that’s most ableist ignorant boomer garbage I’ve heard all day… and my inlaws are visiting.
Hi. I have ASD, diagnosed proper years ago. I have grown up around more ASD individuals than you have, full stop. I have shadowed ABA clinicians for years.
I strongly attest that the statement that younger generations self-diagnosing is all-around harmful is 100% factual and indismissable. There is nothing ignorant about the provable truth.
Ah yes, your personal anecdotal "provable truth". Please do better. For all our sakes.
Alright, please link your peer-reviewed study on this as soon as you were able to prove the generality of your personal impressions.