Armchair diagnoses

Post Reply New Topic

“Are you sure you haven’t got ADHD, babe?” The question comes from a dear and well-meaning friend after I mention in passing how I swing between being hyper-focused and struggling to concentrate at work. I politely shrug and chirp, “don’t think so!”, while secretly wondering when and why it became perfectly acceptable to throw out armchair diagnoses to our mates – or, indeed, perfect strangers – based on the scantest of “symptoms”.

Aside from being just plain wrong – if I have Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) then I’d argue so does anyone who’s ever worked an office job or owned a smartphone – it’s kind of, well, rude, isn’t it? Not to mention utterly bizarre that the average layperson feels so comfortable flinging out medical labels. In the era of social media, it seems like everyone considers themselves an “expert” on neurodivergence – even when that “expertise” boils down to having listened to a podcast or watched a YouTube short about it one time.

The issue has come to the fore again due to actor Bella Ramsey’s revelation that they obtained their autism diagnosis while filming the first season of The Last of Us after a crew member spotted and flagged the signs. In Ramsey’s case, it was slightly different; the colleague in question genuinely had first-hand experience as their own child is neurodivergent.

But that’s a rarity these days. Most of the time, the person proffering their strident opinion on the complexities of the chemical makeup of your brain or the way it’s wired is completely unqualified to do so. The age of the armchair diagnosis is in full swing.

Social media has undoubtedly been a huge factor in your average Joe feeling entitled to pronounce the people in their lives “neurospicy”, thanks to the exponential growth in content surrounding ADHD and autism. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok, while initially great tools for shedding light on these conditions and destigmatising them, have recently been accused of peddling a huge amount of misinformation and convincing an increasing number of people to misdiagnose themselves and others.

One analysis of TikTok autism spectrum disorder (ASD) videos published in the science journal Drugs, Addictions and Health in December 2024 revealed that of 100 TikTok videos tagged with “autism spectrum disorder”, 24 per cent were classed as useful compared to the 40 per cent that were deemed “misleading”. Most clips (86 per cent) weren’t posted by healthcare professionals.

Crucially, the study broke down whether videos were about the symptoms/diagnosis of ASD; overall information about the condition; causes of ASD; or advice on managing the disorder. The vast majority (62 per cent) of content concerned itself with symptoms and diagnosis. Is it any wonder, then, that so many social media users suddenly start seeing neurodivergence everywhere they look?

Some experts have raised the issue of potential misdiagnosis due to increased awareness of these disorders, while others have argued that, if more of us actually are neurodivergent, shouldn’t research be focused on helping autistic people lead happier, healthier lives? “We are currently very focused on making a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ distinction in terms of diagnoses,” as William Mandy, a professor of neurodevelopmental conditions at University College London, told The Guardian But why not say, ‘Somebody has these traits. How might that be affecting their life and what we can do to help?’”

After receiving a diagnosis of both ADHD and autism as an adult, Grimes has come to view the widespread pop psychology shared across social media as increasingly sinister. In a recent post on X (formerly Twitter), the musician suggested that accounts sharing generalizations about symptoms that could signify certain mental health conditions has led to an uptick in potentially harmful self-diagnoses.

“There’s this subculture of I guess ‘mental health’ accounts that I actually think are like, extreme infohazards,” Grimes wrote. After being diagnosed earlier this year, she said, she realized dyslexia might be the reason she’s unable to spell anything without using spell-check. “I feel like had we known this when I was a child I would have worked so much less hard, been on drugs, and so many of the weird obsessions and motivations I had would have been seen as pathological,” she continued. “I could have written off certain things that were very hard for me but I’m glad I over came them.”

Grimes shared her lengthy rumination in response to a post from an account called ADHD Memes, which read: “I saw a TikTok about how excessive reading in childhood is a sign of dissociation and I can’t stop thinking about it.” In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, a number of combinations of present symptoms can be used to reach a diagnosis for any particular disorder. What’s relevant for some might not be for others. Grimes noted that in her own experience, being an avid reader actually helped her manage her ADHD symptoms.

“An adhd account trying to pathologize one of the best things a child can do to help with adhd (and also become an auto didact and knowledgeable person etc etc) is so dark…. I can’t even begin,” she continued. “I think the nature of this uninformed social media mental health subculture is rly a big concern. Some are great ofc but a lot of these seem like explicitly anti civilizational and geared towards making people worse.”

Some users who engaged with the post took issue with Grimes suggesting that mental illnesses can be “contagious.” She cited learning about mental health in school and noticing that herself and other classmates would “start getting symptoms of them during those units” that would later go away. She later clarified: “I meant symptoms – I’ve def seen people get into lifestyle changes and adhd symptoms stop cuz they didn’t have it, they had dopaminergic burn out, which essentially mimics the disorder.”

Generally, Grimes said, “I just think unsupervised medical advice and proliferation of info about symptoms is a very tricky thing.” In defense of her stance, she later added that she went to school for neuroscience. In 2016, she told NPR she “was in a program at McGill [University in Montreal] called Electroacoustics, where we studied a lot of how the brain interacts with music,” which isn’t quite the same thing. Like the pop psychology accounts, it all should be taken with a grain of salt.

I wish this tendency was only limited to autism and ADHD, but people do this with all sorts of diagnoses.

The way people throw labels like narcissist, borderline and psychopath around you'd swear they were 50% of the population.

OCD is a common one. I am sensitive to that one because I have a relative whose OCD led to suicide ideation. Depression is another common one. Feeling very bad after getting fired or breaking up with a partner is normal. While these type of events can trigger depression more often than not it will resolve itself without professional help.

I think it's complicated. On one hand I think people need to realize that ADHD or autism is more common than they may think and that people that have a regular job or act relatively normal can have variants of these diagnosis. If people thow these labels at themselves I can live with that. I think it's pretty easy to challenge them if they are way out of line. But I think you never should diagnose other people unless they clearly ask for your opinion. When it comes to speculate about famous people I think you should be careful with that. But if you are autistic yourself I think in some cases it could be ok to do that in a conversation with other autistic people.

This is a direct result of the neurodiversity movement trying to present autism as a personality type and removing references to disorder.

Nobody is presenting autism as a "personality type". The word you're looking for is "neurotype".

To some the words are interchangeable

https://uquiz.com/quiz/VgV50R/what-type ... e_vignette