comment: >
  
  Where do you see evidence of that? Any articles about fakers? How about a statistic? If not, it’s just a fear you seem to have.
context: The diagnosis process for a lot of psychiatric conditions are surveys and questionaires. You can go to a psychiatrist and ask if you're anxious and they'll give you multiple choice questions and diagnose off of that. Or you can just google the form yourself and self diagnose. A lot of psychiatric disorders are about how we feel and think. Not about sending off some blood sample to a lab and getting a positive result come back.
  
  Overall I think the self diagnosing is a bigger problem with todays youth wanting to be victimized or have an excuse for their actions and weirdness instead of just being straight up with it. For such an “accepting” generation people should really just own up to who they really or without craving attention or an excuse for it
  
  What you're describing are all neuroses that could indicate some deeper psychiatric condition. Whether a person has a mental health condition or not, thinking of ourselves as weak victims is never helpful in any context, yet it's something we all feel from time to time.
  I'm a disability support worker, so when someone tells me they've got a self diagnosed condition, it's not offensive to me or any disabled person I know, it doesn't come across like they're invalidating anyone else's condition. However I do think everyone should talk to a doctor about any condition they feel they might have. >
  
  Piggybacking off of this: You’ve spent your whole entire life inside your own brain. A therapist will spend a period of hours with you and give you a diagnosis. Who do you think knows your personal reality better than yourself? >
  
  Yeah exactly, especially with conditions such as anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD, and many other psychiatric conditions. These are things people know they have even before they get a diagnosis. The diagnosis stage is more about treatment and management.
  People might be unaware of how severe or mild their condition is, some people think they have only mild PTSD despite constant nightmares and suicidal ideation. Some people will think they have severe ADHD because they can't concentrate for long times on things that don't interest them. It's good to get some perspective from experts but ultimately people know when they are struggling to focus or to struggling to stop stressing all the time or struggling to not be miserable. Struggling with our thoughts and feelings is evidence enough to self diagnose. >
  
  I was recently diagnosed with ADHD as a woman so I find this viewpoint interesting.
  Firstly, autism is not a mental illness. An autistic person may have mental illness in conjunction with autism, but autism alone lies under the neurodivergent umbrella. Neurodivergency can include autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia and other similar conditions.
  Why women are often underdiagnosed
  These are serious disabilities that can really impede a person's life, especially if they struggle to find help and acceptance in their community. A lot of women start their journey towards diagnosis later in life due to a number of factors such as:
  
  Poor diagnostic tools and inexperienced professionals
  A misunderstanding that autism and ADHD are more common in boys
  Advanced masking techniques to cover their 'traits'
  
  Why women are often diagnosed later in life.
  The process for many women and men who are diagnosed later in life often includes a level of burnout or breakdown. After a while everything becomes too much, the mask begins to slip and your traits go into overdrive.
  Why does self-diagnosing seem to be on the rise?
  A common way of finding out you could possibly be neurodivergent is through media and people who are aware of these traits appear.
  In the past few years, I have seen an increasing awareness of neurodivergence in women pop up in the media. This is useful for people like myself who had no idea wtf was wrong with them for a very long time. For me, a GP actually suggested I seek a diagnosis due to some struggles I was going through.
  As someone who went through this process self-diagnosing is commonly the first step as an adult. You might be directed to a questionnaire and are asked to evaluate yourself and your experiences thinking back to your childhood. If there's some merit in your experiences than you move to the next step which involves seeking a professional. Waitlists are often months to years long so many people live in limbo for a long time.
  Methods of living with ADHD can help everyone. And everyone experiences ADHD traits from time to time. Given a large amount of stress we have all suffered collectively, I don't doubt there are a lot of people with increased mental health issues that mirror neurodivergent traits. Some mental illnesses can get very severe and alter your brain chemistry and behaviour.
  My takeaway from this is that the mental health systems set up to assist these people are a much larger issue and cause for serious concern than self-diagnosing.
  Apologies for the spelling and grammar errors. Grammarly and Reddit don't play nice. >
  
  I think it's two things. One, people have identity crises, especially teenagers. We all know that type of person who tries on identities like hats. That's pretty embarrassing. You usually grow out of that.
  Two, from personal experience, giving yourself a label or a diagnosis makes it feel more contained and easy to communicate. It's easier to tell someone that you have X and have them understand what you're going through rather than telling them you have these vague symptoms resembling what you imagine X is like. In that respect, it is pretty understandable, possibly good, and not embarrassing. There's something that is sort of reassuring if you can finally get a word to put on what you're experiencing.
  People often sympathize with the diagnosis but not with the symptoms. Tell people at work you're autistic and they will sympathize with you and possibly not attack you. Tell them you do not understand social cues and they will probably just make fun of you. >
  
  I understand the desire to put a label with a disease, and this is not necessarily bad, but the diagnosis needs to be correct. If you want to tell others that you are autistic or depressed; you must actually be those things. A person can almost never correctly assertion their disease, only their symptoms. People might better understand you if you say your autistic, but you may incorrectly understand and describe yourself. If one wishes to put a name with symptoms, they should find a doctor to pick the label >
  
  for sure but unfortunately our medical system is a joke and even if you are experiencing very severe symptoms it can be nearly impossible to see a professional or take months on a waiting list.
  Even then a professional may be reluctant to slap a label on you for fear of what the consequences of that might be. I saw someone for a very long time who resisted any sort of actual diagnosis because the truth is that what I was experiencing didn't fit neatly into any of the boxes and pretty much belonged in this vague "other" category which isn't particularly helpful. Not to mention that misdiagnosis happens all the time even by professionals. 
  I just think it is sort of understandable because I think a lot of stuff is kind of a spectrum anyway and just different levels of severity. Things can be really confusing and hard to nail down and thus communicate in a way that causes someone else to be understanding rather than judgemental. >
  
  Are you under the impression this is a new phenomenon?  Because it's definitely not.
  People - especially young people! - crave identity.  The world is a confusing place, knowing who you are makes it a little easier.  Sometimes it's self-diagnosing mental illness or learning disabilities, or exploring sexual identity, or cliques, or subcultures.  There's nothing embarrassing about it, it just is what it is. >
  
  It’s ok to want to express individuality but not to the extent of totally destroying the definition of a real thing and making it hard for actual mentally Ill ppl to get a diagnosis. Why can’t people just accept that they’re different rather then giving themselves a label? >
  
  people on TikTok claiming to have disorders that they don't doesn't affect the precision of psychiatrists diagnosing actual patients. There's no TikTok-said section in the DSM. Why do you think that it does? >
  
  It just encourages more people to get diagnosed possibly skewing the meaning of the mental illness >
  
  Skewing it towards statistical accuracy? If people are actually diagnosed at higher rates, we have a better Guage of population-level mental illness, neurodivergency, etc. Better data is more usable, so that research actually means something actionable, ASIDE from the identity boost for young people. >
  
  I think what OP is driving at, but utterly failing to explain, is that they think that the fakers will be accommodated by the psychiatric system and diagnosed on the basis of fake symptoms. my sense is that isn't a problem but I don't have data. >
  
  Definitely explained it a little better then I could lol