Are we really overdiagnosing mental illness?

"One of the jokes was about how everyone is getting diagnosed with ADHD these days about the social media videos that encourage viewers to identify common human experiences, like daydreaming or talking a lot, as evidence of the condition. The audience laughed because everyone got it they've all witnessed how common it seems to have become in the last few years. When something becomes this prevalent in society, and this mystifying, it's no surprise it ends up as a punchline."

"The concern is that individuals are labelling their own mild or transient life problems with the language of disorder. Is this happening? Yes. There is evidence of concept creep terminology once reserved for mental illness is now being used to cover more mild phenomena. On social media, people are using the language of mental illness more casually and often inaccurately."

Rates of reported mental health symptoms and ADHD have increased markedly in recent years, particularly among young people. Social media content encourages viewers to identify common experiences like daydreaming or talkativeness as signs of disorder, promoting casual and sometimes inaccurate self-diagnosis. Clinicians report more patients arriving with existing self-diagnoses, increasing the likelihood of false positives. The concept of overdiagnosis historically critiques medical professionals, but public debate centers on self-diagnosis and concept creep, where diagnostic language expands to cover milder phenomena. Established research indicates that both genuine increases and some degree of overdiagnosis are contributing to the apparent rise in diagnoses.

Read at www.theguardian.com