By skyforbes 
For over half of my life, I have been in psychiatric and psychological treatment for an array of disorders. I’m not going to name them in this essay. Privacy isn’t why — I am more than willing to talk about them in whatever level of detail with anyone who asks (as always please reach out!). You can find snippets of sometimes cringey writing on the internet where I talk about my messy and dystopian mind. If anything I’d like to dive into details every time I talk about my mental health.
For several reasons, I can’t here. Well, more accurately, I don’t think I should. First of all, it’s not relevant to what I want to say. You wouldn’t spend significant time in an essay about the stigma of being diabetic describing the symptoms of the disease because it is a wholly separate topic deserving of its own. Adjacent to that concern is that I don’t want this essay to be about my disorders. It’s intended to be about my experience, but an experience independent of my day to day. Most importantly, though, I do not want to stumble my way into talking down because I have a diagnosis and others don’t. I speak with the same expertise as anyone else.
To briefly editorialize, struggling with any psychiatric disorder sucks. It is really, really, italics can’t do this justice, difficult. If my experience is any indication it is the hardest thing I deal with in my everyday life and will likely be my chief struggle until the day I die.
Getting accurate diagnoses was no mean feat for me. It has proven to be a process more than a destination. I’ve had diagnoses come and go, disappear and resurface, and I have received amendments or additions as recently as months ago. I’ve been doing this since age 12.
On top of that, I’ve seen multiple psychiatrists (medical doctors) and over half a dozen psychologists (therapists). I’ve been screened by physicians, campus medical centers, and emergency rooms. The amount of conflicting diagnostic information I still receive is pretty significant. A lot of times pursuing treatment is about going with your gut, the providers you trust, and ensuring insurance doesn’t get mad.
And I am not alone. I have talked to so many people whose experiences have been even more nightmarish. Treated for the wrong disorder which led to a crisis. Forced to switch providers and given a new diagnosis. Sometimes the provider is stubborn and won’t change their mind with any amount of evidence. Meeting a person who was correctly diagnosed in one visit, or only a handful, is, in my experience, a rare experience cause for celebration.
A diagnosis is not simply a label. It is a path to treatment, psychological or psychiatric. It is simultaneously a very useful tool and a dangerous trap. The right diagnosis can help someone develop and test treatment plans, which themselves can open doors to other potential pathways should they be needed (they often are). The wrong one can, literally, destroy your life.
Getting diagnosed is also not the be all and end all to getting better. For one thing, if your care team is doing their jobs, they are triaging your symptoms all the time, whether it’s daily or every few months. Part of that is assessing the symptoms that have been present, but equally important is ensuring no new symptoms go unaccounted for. From my understanding, and I am not a professional, it is pretty rare for someone to have all of the symptom presentations of a disorder at once. Sometimes symptoms will change over time — significant parts of my disorders have faded and disappeared as my brain changed, and others have come into being and grown.
With all of this in mind, here it is. If you hear nothing else, please hear this.
You cannot be diagnosed by the Internet, and you should not seek diagnosis on the Internet.
Often times when someone says this, I hear counterpoints contending that it ignores the equal opportunity of information and possibility for community on the Internet among sufferers, their loved ones, and people who think they may be suffering. Except, it doesn’t. None of that has to do with being self diagnosed after watching a video, reading a post, or taking a quiz.
I just finished watching a video about dialectical behavior therapy — a subtype of therapy I am currently in treatment with. God knows how many memes I’ve sent or TIkToks (reels as I am old and stubborn) I’ve watched about mental health. I have literally met strangers on the Internet and become friends by bonding over mental health (you know who you are [snake emoji]). I exist in that space and it is legitimately a substantial boost.
It’s also true that the abundance of information that exists with such little effort across our society can and does give invaluable information to those who think they need help and aren’t sure where to start. For those who are already in treatment or, like me, have chronic disorders, it can equally be a powerful resource. I have even been encouraged to use the internet by more than one provider.
It’s important, too, for me to acknowledge that even when prospective patients seek a diagnosis, they run into unwilling or unfit providers that make the wrong call, often willfully. This happens far too often. It almost feels like anyone I meet with my length and level of treatment has had something like this happen at least once. It’s absolutely happened to me. Our country’s healthcare system has a dismal record with mental healthcare (shocker) even after the significant progress it’s made. This is a real and unacceptable travesty.
But the truth remains: it’s impossible and inadvisable to seek a diagnosis unprofessionally. It can and does harm those who are seeking treatments. Google the Adderall shortage. Think about the professionals who have been initially skeptical when I say I have OCD (okay, there’s one of them, you’re welcome). The way I feel a need to qualify a diagnosis, or even when I’ve convinced myself I don’t need treatment because of the abundance of high performing people around me suddenly saying they have [blank].
The other hard truth is that it can hurt you. If you believe you have a disorder as a result of an internet screening, are you more or less inclined to listen to a professional, rightly or wrongly, about their opinion? I’d venture to say less, which could be incredibly harmful in the not insignificant case that you have another disorder that looks similar but is treated differently. Do you even show up for treatment? In the worst case, do you insist on a certain diagnosis to the point where you will do anything to receive treatment for it… and that treatment is not what you needed? Are you then more willing to try something else, knowing the first thing didn’t work?
Many issues are “yes, and…” This is a resounding example. Seeking professional help: yes. Using new resources to guide you: yes. American healthcare sucks: yes. I think it’s reasonable to discourage an unrelated practice.
I’m impacted by this stuff every day, so I am going to make this plea: implying that my discouragement of armchair self diagnosis makes me anti-access to healthcare, anti-community, and/or pro-broken robber baron healthcare system is unbelievably shallow. I’d hope you’d read my page before deeming me irredeemable. You might like what you find.
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If you or a loved one is in crisis, call 988.
National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) main site: https://www.nami.org/
Phone 1–800–950–6264 (M-F 10a-10p)
Text NAMI to 62640
NAMI Maryland site: https://namimd.org/
DMs are always open ❤