DIY Diagnosis: A Deep Dive into the Why & How of Self Diagnosis
Can’t stand dishes in the sink? OCD. Can’t focus at work? ADHD. Get stressed? Anxiety.
You’ve likely seen a reel pretty much exactly like this. Or if you’re a little more old-school (like me!) you’ve probably googled it or gone through the DSM/ICD Criteria to figure it out. I mean what could be the harm in giving it a shot? Going to get an official diagnosis can be pretty intimidating and is still (unfortunately) a little stigmatised. So what’s the harm in typing in my symptoms, just to check… what exactly is wrong with me?
But wait, why is having a “diagnosis” such a big deal anyway? Well, for some of us, it can feel like a stamp of validation for our experiences. This also speaks to the wider issue of mental health needs not being taken seriously unless you can ‘prove’ it. “But you don’t look depressed? Please everyone gets anxious sometimes, you’re just making excuses.” Sometimes this can make you question your own reality. I know I’m struggling but what if it’s all in my head…
For better or worse, diagnoses do hold a lot of weight. Even the knowledge and awareness that this is why I struggle with this particular thing can be such a powerful feeling. It can make a difference in understanding and working through particular difficulties. Another benefit is finding supportive communities with others who have similar experiences. It can finally feel like you’re understood, you’re not alone and more fundamentally, that you’re okay.
It can help with suitable treatments, just like with any health condition. In many institutions, this documentation also determines the support you can get, for example, academic accommodations in schools and colleges.
It can also spur you to get professional help (which we’re big fans of, for obvious reasons). But professional care is rarely accessed quickly or easily – it can be expensive, time-consuming, feel stigmatising, or require external support that isn’t available. This often makes self-diagnosis the only viable option for some people.
In this context, self-diagnosis will not go away by saying “Don’t do it.” (When has that ever worked?) It’s important to understand what drives people to diagnose themselves, and what that experience is like. The most intuitive reason is recognising that something is wrong and that you need help. This needs to be respected and trusted; after all, we do know ourselves best!
These self-diagnoses can be inaccurate, but it’s important not to dismiss them right away. It’s reflective of how your client views their lived experience. And it’s the professional’s responsibility to open-mindedly investigate these concerns rather than rebuke or disprove them.
By uncritically dismissing self-diagnoses, we often make the mistake of seeing diagnoses as set in stone. Even professional opinions change or contradict each other. There’s still a lot we don’t know about how the human brain works. We may then try to make the patient or client fit into a diagnosis that we believe looks a certain way.
And here’s the critical thing about diagnoses themselves. We’ve created these categories and a list of symptoms to understand a particular type of human experience and condition. But the same diagnosis can look very different based on one’s gender, ethnicity, dis/ability, and comorbid conditions. People with chronic illnesses, otherwise disabled folks, women, trans and queer people, and people of colour have historically been misunderstood by doctors or received incorrect diagnoses. In several marginalised communities, there are well-documented reasons for distrusting medical professionals. Resorting to self-diagnosis can then be a powerful tool in reclaiming power and for self-advocacy to get the help they deserve.
But it feels like a band-aid solution for a much deeper systemic problem. Why should someone have to exert themselves personally to fix the inequities of a broken system? Shouldn’t we instead ensure that people feel respected and heard by healthcare providers?
And this leads to the real danger of self-diagnosis. It can lead to increased anxiety and stress, push people to seek unhelpful or unscientific treatments, and create strong beliefs about themselves that prevent further understanding of their experience. It takes a lot of rigorous training to become a competent mental health professional, capable of giving official diagnosis. That’s an overwhelming undertaking for a layperson, just struggling to understand their experiences.
It also feeds into a need to label and categorise oneself, which is unhelpful when people start to feel hyper-aware of themselves and see their every thought and action as a symptom. And part of why we’ve started being so hyper-aware is the culture and conversations around these labels.
What box can we fit you into today?
An increased awareness of mental health has also been accompanied by an overload of misinformation. A lot of this is unscientific (read: shady, grifty, based on nothing but vibes) wellness advice. For example, ‘How I cured my depression in X amount of time,’ or content that’s harder to clock, like ‘How to identify PTSD in your partner.’ Even genuine attempts to break down complex topics can be riddled with errors and oversimplification. In this context, self-diagnosis followed by self-treatment can have pretty bad consequences, especially when faced with disappointment if the given advice doesn’t work.
So where does that leave us when it comes to self-diagnosis? Maybe it starts with a recognition that self-diagnosis isn’t going away anytime soon. That it’s a symptom of a deeper issue: the struggle to make sense of our experiences, in a system that fails to provide it. Let’s shift our lens from blame to empathy, recognizing that self-diagnosis arises from a quest for clarity, in a world that sometimes falls short.