>

I always believe experience and degree have the same mass.
It makes you more knowledgeable than the layperson. But also, "the blind leading the blind" is a phrase for a reason >

People need to be their own advocate for their health including mental health. >

They want to be in relation to their own revolution of experience as it relates to their diagnosis. 
But yeah, sometimes some variations of mental illness will inhibit the awareness and ability to be rational and self-aware about that particular condition, etc.
While the experience can be valid for those who have improved and have found mechanisms to make their condition better, and that experience can be possibly worth sharing, other times it can be like the blind leading the blind and sometimes even worse, making others with mental illness amplify the symptoms of their illness. Kinda like politics! >

Come to the bipolar subreddits, there are so many posts from people who don’t even understand their own condition, let alone mental illnesses in general. Even worse when people try to diagnose themselves. >

It's awful. I see so much misinformation in bipolar spaces. The most common are 1) that any impulsive decision or self-destructive decision is automatically mania or hypomania i.e. I dyed my hair green, I'm sooooo manic 2) that "cycling" from happy to sad, or whatever combination, during the span of a single day is bipolar disorder. People with bipolar disorder do not cycle daily but that shit is everywhere. >

Between that and the new "sElF-DiaGnoSeD" bullshit, you have a recipe for disaster. Looking at you TikTok. 
Oh wait, isn't that what zoomers overwhelmingly use? And what? They have rampant mental health issues? 
Imagine my shock. >

Ban TikTok! >

Social media is the mental illness self diagnosis and treatment super center tho? >

It doesn't. But, gained experience over years and through therapy from professionals can give greater knowledge about the subject. Especially therapy, because therapy is about gaining knowledge and understanding of, and how to manage said illness.
The general rule to become an "expert" is the 10,000 hour rule. (three years) depending on the subject. So it is arguable if someone has lived with an illness for five or even ten years, they have gained an extensive amount of knowledge on said illness.
That being said it doesn't qualify them to give advice or treat others on that illness and to do so could be wreckless.
Edit; spelling >

There is no “10,000 hours” rule. That’s a line from a Malcom Gladwell book to very poorly articulate a simple concept that it takes time to become proficient in something. Gladwell is a pseudo science author. 
For some things, it takes far less time to become proficient, and for others, 10,000 hours is nothing. If you enjoy baking bread, you will probably be very good at baking bread well before you hit 10,000 hours. If you’re ever in the unfortunate position of being on death row, you will want an attorney with much more than 10,000 hours of experience. >


There is no “10,000 hours” rule. 

Yeah -- but it's kind of nice to make people who NEVER LEARN feel a bit better about enduring a process.
I pick up some new technology in a weekend, and I've had over a decade to learn Spanish. About all I can do is order second helpings of Lomo in "poquito" portions. I still say; "yo tango mucho hombre" but that's because it makes my abuelita laugh. >

I wanted some Churros one time and I pronounced it Chorro.  Luckily everyone laughed and my GF orders in Mexican places now. >

It doesn't make you an expert, but if you're under treatment, you learn about mental illness and a lot of the inside baseball. So, you could be more informed than the average person. >

I think this is more common on Reddit than it is on real life. I've met people who suffer from various mental health issues and none of them had this vibe that most (if not all) Reddit people do - the "well it's autism because I have ADHD...". >

I agree fully with the body of your argument, but not the title.
There are a lot of different areas of mental health, psychiatry, psychology, counselling, nursing etc etc, and experts in one are rarely experts in another. Psychiatrists often don't excel in therapy (or talking to humans at all), Psychologists in most places know little about drugs and aren't licensed to prescribe, etc.
Peer Support is an important branch of treatment and is widely used in an official capacity precisely because lived experience does give a level of expertise in mental illness. Peer Support workers can help people to navigate the labyrinthine mental health system, share and help implement coping strategies from the context of someone they actually worked for, and offer basic, but more skilled approaches like Active Listening.
I think the problems come in when people don't stay in their lane. Obviously you don't want someone unqualified giving medication advice or taking the place of a therapist e.g.
The internet makes things very blurry, on the one hand it can be a great resource for support, but on the other it's the wild west and it can be hard to tell if someone is giving sound advice or not, and this is greatly compounded by one or both parties potentially being quite unwell and that impacting on levels of insight and judgement.
I think if people stick to a few rules online, both in giving support and seeking it, things can be improved a bit. No attempting to diagnose, no med recommendations, no suggestions for major life decisions, and always recommending professional evaluations and treatment. If you're seeking help online always take things with a pinch of salt, consider carefully if a particular coping strategy is right for you, and don't make med changes/end or replace treatment or override the advice of professionals based on what someone on the internet said. >

Another related problem is that just because you have mental illness doesn't mean you're a good candidate to help others with it professionally. Most of them would make TERRIBLE therapists and psychologists and psychiatrists. >

Well not mental illness in general no, but in the process of learning how to manage a specific mental illness, you will certainly understand more than people who don't have it. >

No, having a mental illness alone doesn't automatically make you an expert. But being mentally ill often leads one down a path of studying human psychology to an obsessive degree in an attempt to understand yourself and how to cope with your symptoms. So you are likely to know more about mental illnesses than the average Joe, but yeah, not technically an expert I guess. 
Therapists are just people like everyone else with varying degrees of knowledge and experience with certain illnesses. I've met some counselors who blew me away with their understanding of what I had going on and I've met some who shouldn't have been allowed to counsel a gerbil let alone a mentally ill person. But if you've undergone years of therapy you will likely have learned some helpful coping mechanisms and information that could be helpful to others with similar issues. >

I may be a somewhat unique case, but a group of ‘lifestyle change’ advocates on Facebook inadvertently put me on a path to reverse bipolar 1 far more effectively that 5 years of psychiatric treatment ever did. I agree though, in general stay away from online ‘experts’ (and avoid Facebook altogether as it’s a hot-bed of toxic nonsense). >

how to reverse it?