What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: Do You Really Have ADHD?
It may not be fair to call a medical diagnosis “trendy,” but more and more adults in the United States are seeking treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. ADHD, once considered a childhood disease, has made its way into adulthood: About 15.5 million adults in the United States are “officially” diagnosed with the disorder , and more people believe they have ADHD. Many of them are wrong, but that’s okay.
Thanks to a constant stream of online influencers and pop science, more and more people are being diagnosed with ADHD, autism, depression and other mental disorders. Very few of them are qualified to make such diagnoses. While it’s easy to laugh at someone who self-diagnoses a complex mental illness after watching TikTok, the rise in self-diagnosis, however misguided, points to an unmet need for mental health care.
The double-edged sword of “awareness”
A recent survey found that more than half of Gen Z get health information through TikTok , and there are more than four million videos tagged #ADHD on the platform. It is one of the top 10 health-related hashtags, and the top 100 videos on the topic have a total of nearly half a billion views. So awareness of ADHD is high , especially among young people, which is a good thing.
The disease is underdiagnosed and undertreated in adults in the United States. ADHD is associated with job loss, depression, substance abuse and higher rates of illness. Talking about the disorder online destigmatizes it and can encourage many to seek treatment they may not have had before. And the treatment is effective. So it’s great that more people are wondering if they have ADHD, but there’s a downside to this awareness.
A recent study of the 100 most popular #ADHD videos (with nearly half a billion total views) shows that more than 50% of the claims made about the disorder in these videos are misleading. With every false claim in a TikTok video, the popular idea of what ADHD actually is veers further away from a mental illness and toward a trendy set of fads.
Why are you (probably) wrong about your ADHD diagnosis?
You can’t tell if you have ADHD by taking an online quiz or watching someone else’s video. Self-diagnosis lacks the objectivity and clinical context of a professional diagnosis, and even doctors may have difficulty recognizing ADHD. In people seeking treatment, ADHD is usually comorbid with other mental health disorders, such as major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, and/or alcohol abuse. Medical professionals with specialized training and experience often treat comorbidities rather than the underlying problem , so it’s no surprise that regular people viewing TikTok get it wrong so often. But these errors still serve an important purpose.
It might not be ADHD, but maybe that’s not it.
ADHD does not mean that he sometimes forgets about meetings or gets distracted from meetings from time to time. Popular videos about ADHD on social media often equate common life experiences—losing your keys, hyperfixation with a hobby, losing your thoughts—as symptoms. They may indicate a disorder or simply be part of being human. It is a spectrum, and as with autism, it can lead to overgeneralization and people believing that normal human experience is part of a mental illness ; conversely, it can lead neurotypical people to view a serious mental health problem as something unusual, cute or funny. It’s not good, but it’s better than having no explanation or language to talk about mental illness.
When people say, “I think I have ADHD,” they often mean something like, “I struggle, and maybe that’s why.” Whether impulsivity and an inability to concentrate meet diagnostic criteria for ADHD or not, it’s important to pay attention, notice patterns, and take mental health seriously. It may not be a medical diagnosis, but it can be an important act of self-reflection. For many, the name of the struggle is the first step towards finding support, even if the name is not entirely accurate.
Why people are attracted to misleading videos about ADHD
It’s easy to blame social media for spreading health misinformation (it happens all the time), but people prefer getting health information from social media for obvious reasons. Many people view the practice of medicine as impersonal and even intimidating, and consider doctors to be untrustworthy . Social media personalities, on the other hand, are charismatic and do not threaten, judge, or charge for their time.
In an ideal world, TikTok for ADHD would be a means of medical evaluation and treatment, but too often it becomes the end of the road. Unevidence-based “treatments” are on the rise. Doctors’ skepticism develops into full-blown distrust. And research shows that frequent social media use often correlates with worse patient-provider relationships, although it is unclear which is cause and which is effect.
Social media will (likely) continue to serve as a support system.
TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook are not the optimal methods of diagnosis and treatment, but given the current realities of the healthcare system, they may be the best that many people can do. Until structural changes make mental health care more accessible and accessible, platforms like TikTok will continue to serve as temporary support systems. Whatever their shortcomings, they fill a gap that the medical system has not yet filled. And for now, it may be the only starting point available to millions.