Online mental health content has positive aspects, but has also contributed to innacurate self-diagnosing.

The Barnum effect explains why vague descriptions feel personally relatable to most people.

It's important to distinguish between normal difficult experiences and symptoms of pathology.

If you spend enough time on Instagram or TikTok, you could be convinced that you have ADHD. Or autism, or a personality disorder, or depression, or anxiety. You may learn you have an insecure attachment style, too, whether it’s anxious or avoidant. Short-form content has led to an increase in inaccurate self-diagnosis, and we need to look at why it’s happening.

The Positive Aspects of Increased Access to Information

A lot of good has come with increased awareness of and access to mental health information. It has lowered stigma, encouraging people to seek help from their support system or professionals. It has helped people better understand when their experience moves from a normal degree of difficult to a clinical-level issue that requires more intervention. People have found community with others who share diagnoses or have had similarly challenging experiences.

Further, some people have been able to identify a clinical problem that might otherwise have gone undiagnosed due to lack of awareness or access to healthcare. As people learn more about disorders and their criteria, they are better able to spot these clinical issues in themselves.

The problem is, people are also able to spot a clinical issue even when one doesn’t actually exist.

Without a better understanding of how diagnoses are determined and the specific criteria that need to be met, people are at risk of checking off a few........

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