Self diagnosis seems extremely popular in the last 2 years. Unrelated to autism, we also seem to be having an adhd epidemic based on the number of peole self diagnosing it.

Self-diagnosing was being mocked on the Internet at least as far back as 2006. It's definitely not just the last 2 years.

I do think things like tiktok have caused it to explode. I remember my last year of teaching we had a PD session on what to do if teens start self diagnosing themselves with various behaviours. It causes issues cause then they often do start exhibiting other behaviours they didn't have and it leads to a lot of problems. Tiktok has also done massive damage to things like DID where people claim it and that they can just 'switch' to their 'alters' at will. I knew some people who actually had DID and they hated this and how it basically made light of all the serious issues they have.

So I do think the self-diagnosis trend is increasing thanks to social media networks. And in some ways it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

OTOH, DSM, govt pages etc focus only on small choldren, do not mention things like shutdown/meltdown at all etc. If one has grown up in a country, where upper end of the spectrum did not officially exist (eg USSR) those tiktoks are, like, only way to learn about these concepts.

The multiple personality disorder and Munchausen-by-internet nonsense exploded on the Tumblr scene circa 2014.

Self diagnosis is valid because the formal process is bullshit lol. The diagnostic process utterly lacks reliability in practice, there has been no two years in the last half a century where autism has been diagnosed at the same rate from year to year. Diagnosis has instead multiplied many times over.

The biggest problem I have with self-diagnosis is the idea that self-diagnosis (along with formal diagnosis) is actually capable of diagnosing a neurodevelopment disorder. It just ain’t so and autism is a social construct that LARPs as a medical one.

It doesn't help that professional diagnosis services are both hard to access and that they often seem to have a poor understanding of the conditions they are trying to diagnose.

I'm not convinced that self-diagnosis is any less accurate than professional diagnosis for conditions like autism or ADHD.

I'm sure it's less accurate. Look how many people say they "have OCD" when they like a clean room. How many of those people understand that they don't actually have OCD?

However, current psychology is realizing the previous ways of lumping people with vastly disparate needs into finite categories is bad and dumb and doesn't really help anyone. Turns out, making someone's mental illness easy for nobodies to talk about isn't that useful for treatment, while extreme nuance and personalization IS really good for treatment.

You criticize self diagnosis but your criticism falls short because fail to actually look into how reliable professional diagnosis is.

It ain’t great!

I wouldn’t use the word “accurate” but professional diagnosis is so wildly unreliable that it’s hard for self-diagnosis to do worse. People give a lot of unwarranted credibility to professional autism diagnosis.

It's a temporary catch all term that needs to go away once science illuminates this dark corner. We don't know why cockroaches turn left or right, psychologists need to be humbled.

Indeed, “spectrum” does mean “catch all” and autistics, where they do have medical issues (and they often do), don’t all have the same ones.