What do you think of self diagnosing mental health?

[Frangelina]

I hate it when people self diagnose. i mean seriously if you really believed you had a mental health problem then you would eventually go get some professional help for it without looking it up. when i went to the doctors the very first time because i was self harming i had no idea that he would stick me on antidepressants after just talking to him for 50 minutes. doctors are far too keen to put people on those nasty things.

these days people are like oh im so depressed ... if this happens then i will kill myself..
it annoys me so much because its these people, and believe me ive met a few in the psychiatric hospital, that get all the help because the doctor is trying to find a diagnosis when really everyone can see that they are just a bit unhappy or a little attention seeker.

whereas when you quite clearly have some form of mental disorder then you are just shoved on medication and left to deal with things.

i think self diagnosing is very unsafe and can cause you to actually believe that you have a mental disorder when you are perfectly fine.

i know people that purposly look for things that are mentally wrong with them just so that they can get diagnosed and get medication.
believe me meds arent all they are cracked up to be. infact i hate them so much..

people who make up these fake illnesses will one day regret looking for this kind of attention because once your in the mental health system its soo hard to get out of it.. thats if you ever do.

overall i think to diagnose yourself with a mental health illness is far too easy to do on the internet or from books. after seeing this thread i looked up some of my symptoms and it came back with a number of different serious illnesses which is quite scary. im actually diagnosed with servere depression and some form of schizophrenia im not too sure what though. im going to ask my psychologist tomorrow i think

the bast advice i can give to anyone who is self diagnosing is to stop it. if you genuinly think you have a mental disorder then you should ask your GP to refer you to a psychiatrist.. just be careful when they start shoving medication down your neck every two seconds!

[Fairy Poppins]

I don't think there's too much harm in reading up about disorders on the Internet. However, it is very easy to think "Omg that sounds like me, I must have that then". If you really feel that you are suffering from some kind of disorder, you should definately speak to your doctor.

x

[Double X]

It's silly to get mad at people who self-diagnose, because if they are actually doing it for attention or paranoia, they have their own emotional problems that cause them do to such a thing that's why I don't judge people who self-diagnose.

[Thirteen]

Originally Posted by Double X

It's silly to get mad at people who self-diagnose, because if they are actually doing it for attention or paranoia, they have their own emotional problems that cause them do to such a thing that's why I don't judge people who self-diagnose.

I don't know, I know someone who did such sheerly to try and "One-Up" me, I guess. She pretended to have things only after I mentioned my real possibilities, to a different friend. And she told other people she had problems, only to like, uphold a Punk image I guess. She never used to be like that, until she moved away for a bit and started trying too hard to be a "Hardcore Punk". She was more punk beforehand, in my opinion. So thats an example of justification for getting mad at someone faking shit. Making it a fucking FASHION STATEMENT to have mental illnesses is just low.

[i_like_black]

SELF DIAGNOSIS IS BAD!

Why?
Self fulfilling prophecy is one of the main reasons.
If a person decides they think thy have a disorder, based on what they've read, they will actually start displaying symptoms! Even if they hadn't in the past, even if they only met one of the criteria when reading about it online. Therefore, through deciding, based on what they've read, that they have a disorder, they actually create the disorder within themselves!

This can be true whether the person is attention seeking or not. The more they think about it and dwell on it, the more they will start acting the way people with the disorder are supposed to act. The sad part is, this is at least partially a subconcious occurrence.

If you are worried you have a disorder, I urge you to see a professional! Do not go in saying "I think I have disorder x" - this means you've already decided what you want the professional to be hearing. Tell them you think something's wrong. You don't know what. They'll ask lots of questions.

Let the professionals be the judge of what you do or do not have.
Do not ever self diagnose. Don't even think, "my symptoms line up with this . . ."
You may be a teenager. You may have environmental factors you haven't considered.
Disorders are not as common as they are made out to be. On a website like this, there is a higher ratio of people with diagnosed disorders simply because it is a help site.

If you are older than say, 18 - 20ish, and you feel something's been messed up for a while, I still think that your FIRST thing you should do is to see a professional.
Doing internet research should come after a diagnosis, if one is received.

That's how I feel about it anyway

[kingsprincess724]

Originally Posted by ☣ ArcAngel ☣

Yes, actually. Hypochondria and Munchausen are both mental problems. Although, I've noticed (in what I've personally seen, anyways) most the people who fake for attention, self-diagnose, or whatever, are usually teenagers. Usually, they are either looking for attention/sympathy from their peers, or they're trying too hard to be different. These ones usually grow out of it though, so it's obviously not a mental problem. I know some people who went to high school with me and acted all mopey and crap, trying too hard to act like they've got something wrong, just for image sake. And they grew out of it, to be normal, well-rounded people.

i was going to read all the way through this discussion before i replied but this post hit a button. The statement you just made is exactly why the teenagers that do have mental disorders get overlooked or blamed for wanting attention. Too many adults think that teenagers all they want is attention that whatever they are going through is just a phase and they will grow out of it.

I have not been diagnosed with chronic depression but I have a pretty good hunch that I have it because I have battled depression for six years now a lot of times when things are going really good in my life this depression hits out of the blue and makes me feel like crap. This has led me to cutting and eating problems and it is because there is a handful of teenagers that do it for attention that adults throw all teenagers into that generalization and it is wrong and unfair. Even though I have had a pretty good idea that I have had depression for six years it took six years of therapy before my therapist has felt strongly enough that I have depression to put me on medicine to finally get it under control. And i believe the generalization i mentioned above is exactly why it took me so long to get the help i needed even though i have been needing it for a long time.

I do believe to a point that doctors are too quick to diagnose especially when it comes to ADHD but I have seen this in mainly little kids particularly boys who parents don't discipline them and they run wild so they make them zombies but this is not always the case, some little kids do have it. This is a disorder that really for the people that do have it they are disadvantaged because it has become such a common term. Tons of teenagers, especially girls say they are ADD as a casual term without realizing it is a serious disorder that can cause a horrible time for someone who really does have it. I actually found out i had it when an ex of mine drugged a water bottle my friend and I were drinking out of without my current knowledge with Straterra and it made my friend crazy and calmed me down. When i later found out what it was and did some research i found that for those who are not ADHD the drug has the opposite effect. Several months later i was diagnosed

also as a closing note, it has been mentioned people getting the prescriptions just for the high, it is usually pretty obvious when this is the case because like i said the medicines will have the opposite effect that they are supposed to (AKA the high that the person is looking for)

[Thirteen]

Originally Posted by kingsprincess724

i was going to read all the way through this discussion before i replied but this post hit a button. The statement you just made is exactly why the teenagers that do have mental disorders get overlooked or blamed for wanting attention. Too many adults think that teenagers all they want is attention that whatever they are going through is just a phase and they will grow out of it.

Hate to scare you here, but I was a teenager once. Not that long since I've been out of such, either. But, as I said in my post, I saw ALOT of this in high school, mostly to fit in to stereotypes. The "Goths" who tried too hard to be mopey out front the school, and had a different demeanour outside of school. Yeah, newsflash, they were faking. They grew up to NOT be depressed, as soon as they stopped being "Goth", or whatever else. Trust me, I keep in touch with a few of them still.

I do agree its wrong for adults to make generalizations that everyone is faking it, but there are many teens, from what I've seen, who do fake it. For attention, for the sake of stereotypes, to get their hands on drugs, whatever. And sure, you say "people getting the prescriptions just for the high, it is usually pretty obvious when this is the case because like i said the medicines will have the opposite effect that they are supposed to (AKA the high that the person is looking for)", doctors DON'T stalk the patient around. People can easily fake needing the medicine, and fake that it does whats expected of it, to continue getting the high.

Like a former friend I mentioned in this thread, her doctor "diagnosed" her with ADHD, and she faked it looking for a fix. She had snorted Ritalin recreationally before, when she lived in a different town for a bit, to get a high. She was out, and didn't know anyone who dealt around here. Her doctor prescribed her Concerta, which is apparently much harder to crush up (from what I heard from my actual ADHD friend, who had let a couple friends take a couple of his pills in high school!), and she claimed it "didn't help her", so she wouldn't take it.

So before you assume I'm trying to pick on every teenager who has a problem, I'm not. I'm making an observation, based on things I've seen, and changes I've seen in people. Maybe you should've read the whole thread, and you'd notice theres a trend of people who have seen the same things, or similar even. Heck, if you read my other post here, I give a perfect example of the former friend mentioned above, faking various mental illnesses. Don't know why she did, because its not like she told the whole world (for attention), but she told people she had a reputation to keep with, I guess.

See, her "punk" friends in the city she had been in for a few months, I guess they all either had, or faked (I don't know them, so I can't say) various forms of mental illness, from ADHD and Depression, to Bipolar and BPD, since she tossed those terms around to me, and a few other people. She has none of the things she said, and my guess is, she claimed such under what seems to be the Punk stereotype. I guess to be Punk, you have to be troubled and angsty and crazy and whatever else.

So please, don't play me that violin about how I'm putting a big bad label on everyone, when I'm obviously not. I didn't say ALL on ANYTHING, and I made a GENERALIZATION, not a SPECIFICATION.