TikTok trend that makes teens believe they have serious mental disorders
This isn&#x27;t just for teens - It extends to the college students I see come through a mentoring program I volunteer with.<p>In some cases it&#x27;s positive: I&#x27;ve seen a few people be convinced to seek treatment for anxiety and depression disorders after seeing people they trust on social media open up about their own therapy experiences.<p>But the worst offender (in older students, anyway) has to be ADHD right now. The sheer amount of bad ADHD self-diagnosis material on TikTok and other platforms is unbelievable. Influencers inherently want to reach the broadest audience possible, so they have an inherent conflict of interest to convince as many people as possible that they have ADHD. &quot;Follow me for more ADHD tips!&quot;<p>The result is a lot of TikToks and other short-form content that misrepresents ADHD as everyday struggles such as not being able to remember everyone&#x27;s names at parties or forgetting to get all of the groceries you need at the store. Watch enough of these videos and anyone can become convinced they have ADHD. At one point, it felt like <i>everyone</i> in one cohort was convinced they had undiagnosed ADHD and wanted to discuss it in the Slack as the explanation for everything in their lives. It got bad enough that people were coaching each other about how to convince skeptical doctors to prescribe ADHD meds by exaggerating specific symptoms, at which point we had to shut down such conversation. Watching the ADHD self-diagnosis misinformation spread like wildfire was honestly one of my more terrifying social media experiences in recent history.<p>But it gets even worse: During COVID, the US government suspended a rule that required patients to have established a past in-person relationship with a prescriber before receiving controlled substance prescriptions. Several startups are capitalizing on this rule change with subscription services to send you Adderall prescriptions after a short 5-minute Zoom with a doctor. And of course, these ads are being served up to the people consuming the ADHD self-diagnosis TikToks. It&#x27;s only a few clicks to talk to a pill mill that will prescribe you Adderall (for a monthly fee, of course).<p>At this point, I&#x27;m beginning to fear that so many young people are self-diagnosing ADHD from internet misinformation that we&#x27;re heading for a reckoning with ADHD medication prescribing. It&#x27;s starting to feel a bit reminiscent of the prescription opioid pandemic, where opioids were being prescribed to basically everyone who requested them. It wouldn&#x27;t be good for actual ADHD patients if countries started severely cracking down on prescription practices.