Mental Health Is More Than Its Symptoms

Teens today have grown up with the Internet’s information at their finger-tips. Information about any and all topics can be accessed with a single google search, and influential accounts on social media promote information in creative forms. Social media opens the door for teens to connect with others around the globe. Mental health awareness has never been so popular, but with the interesting articles and simple instagram posts comes a wave of confusion. The depth of mental health diagnosis is overshadowed by common human experiences–shared on social media–turned into mental illness symptoms.

Self diagnosing can lead to false conclusions about symptoms. Mental illnesses are complicated in terms of symptom variety. Symptoms occur in clusters. Some teenagers diagnose themselves with multiple mental disorders from a list of symptoms, but in reality, they only suffer from one. Symptom severity is also a major component of the diagnosis process, and personal bias can overshadow the root of the problem. Symptom clusters vary between external environment factors and symptom severity. A teenager that suffers from generalized anxiety might find themselves researching specific anxiety disorders. They might diagnose themselves with multiple anxiety disorders because they possess symptoms of each. What they fail to consider is that their generalized disorder already considers each of those anxiety disorders in the treatment process. Their only accomplishment of self-diagnosing would have been raising their anxiety levels.

Romanticizing mental illness not only negatively affects the self-diagnosing teenagers but also those who truly suffer from mental disorders. When teens diagnose themselves with ADHD or OCD, they may refer to everyday behaviors as “so OCD” or just their ADHD “acting up.” This trivializes those who actually suffer with OCD and ADHD. Their experiences and struggles feel invalidated or extreme because others appear to handle it better. Mental illnesses are not something that teenagers truly want. It is not a part of a person’s identity; it is an illness that seeps into their everyday lives. There is nothing wrong with being traumatized without PTSD. Trauma is a common human experience, as well as anxiousness and sadness. Genuine victims of mental illness should not feel the need to question their validity because others do not fully understand it.

Reading about mental illness symptoms on the Internet is helpful for learning about mental health in general, but using the symptoms to self-diagnose is not useful. Instead, taking certain mental illness questionnaires can be helpful in giving an estimate. However, questionnaires cannot account for context and external factors like professional therapists or psychiatrists can. Professionals are the only people that can truly diagnose teenagers with mental illness. Self-diagnosing is not effective, and it causes more harm than good.