| Relevant paper on a Tourettes-like sociogenic illness: https://academic.oup.com/brain/advance-article/doi/10.1093/b... And, for what it's worth, a personal anecdote: A friend of mine recently had her teenage daughter "come out" as autistic. Her daughter is... SO NOT autistic. She's a social butterfly who's extraordinarily empathetic, never struggled for a moment to make friends, never struggled with focusing, coordination, language comprehension, eye contact, reading facial expressions, or any of the myriad symptoms of autism. But her daughter is quirky and artistic and sometimes gets a little anxious in large social gatherings. Due to TikTok, she became CONVINCED this means she is autistic. She was also furious at her mother for refusing to accept this diagnosis. At first her mom kind of shrugged off the self-diagnosis as a goofy teenage episode. ...But then her daughter's school psychologist started recommending occupational therapy and medication for her "autism." My friend demanded to know what symptoms the psychologist was seeing, and was met with the following: "She doesn't have any obvious autism symptoms, but girls can be very, very good at masking their autism. And she's saying she thinks anxiety medication and autism therapy sessions would be helpful, and people don't ask for those sorts of things if they don't need it." Friend immediately took her daughter to see another psychologist (this one who specializes in autism.) This specialist said she didn't see even a hint of autism, and felt the anxiety was mild, normal for a teenager, and would be harmful to medicate. Now here's the weirdest part: according to this specialist, she keeps seeing this exact same scenario play out. Mildly awkward teenager gets addicted to TikTok, becomes convinced they're autistic, and gets furious at their parents for "denying them treatment." Baffled parents ends up taking them to this specialist, who confirms their gut instinct that their kid is 100% neurotypical. The scariest part of this, according to the specialist, isn't teens going down stupid rabbit holes on social media. It's the new generation of psychologists (like the young school psychologist) that emphasize "positive reinforcement" of identity. Teen says they're autistic? Then they're autistic! Simple as that. Now hand them some drugs, because they "wouldn't be asking for it if they didn't need it." The good news: my friend's daughter saw a therapist for a few months, talked through her anxiety, is doing way better, and now admits she doesn't think she has autism after all. The bad news: It's the job of mental health professionals to provide proper guidance when it comes to diagnosis, medication, and therapy. And at the moment, many of our practitioners seem to be failing at this, choosing instead to reinforce teenage fantasies. |