January 14, 2025 • 31 mins
Does being *too online* make it increasingly hard to hang on to an inherent sense of identity?
Between the algorithm, the content creators, and the very online therapists, maybe it makes sense that more and more people are self diagnosing from online content – and are telling their IRL therapists about it.
But what if the sense of belonging we get from claiming a diagnosis is just a stand in for what’s actually needed?
With Nadira Goff (Slate), P.E. Moscowitz (MentalHellth), and Marcus Brittain Fleming (LCSW, Bandwidth Care).
Links:
On TikTok, mental health creators are confused for therapists. That's a serious problem. (2021)
How mental health became a social media minefield
The BuzzFeedification of Mental Health | Mental Hellth (Feb 2021)
From pee tapes to Pulitzers: The rise and fall of Buzzfeed News | The Independent
Why "TikTok Diagnoses" Are on the Rise | Psychology Today
Women Are Discovering They May Have ADHD Or Be On The Autism Spectrum From Trending TikTok Videos
The fight over what’s real (and what’s not) on dissociative identity disorder TikTok - The Verge
https://neuroqueer.com/throw-away-the-masters-tools/
Mad World: Politics of Mental Health by Micha Frazer-Carroll
Girls Self-Diagnosing on TikTok Aren't Why Ableism Happens - Dr. Devon Price
Changing the Framework: Disability Justice | Leaving Evidence
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, it's kay. Basket Case gets into some heavy topics
about mental health. But keep in mind that I'm not
a mental health professional. So in the description of this
and every episode, I'll leave you a list of relevant
resources and links to the things I'm reading, and while
you're listening, take care. So, in one way, they started
(00:20):
during the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
This is my depression room. It's been like those for.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
For full transparency, I had to log off Instagram around
the time my feed filled up with black squares in
twenty twenty. And while I loved TikTok while I had it,
I simply do not possess the self control required to
have an app like that on my phone. Okay, I
just don't. So I'm not what you would call chronically
online derogatorily, I have recently touched the Blade of Grass.
(00:49):
But even when I'm technically logged off, I still know
what the very online are talking about because I also
love consuming media about the Internet. And so when this
phenomenon trickled from TikTok to Instagram and then to the
culture writers and Internet journalists, I noticed in the depths
of the pandemic, content creators were posting about mental illness
(01:13):
and neurodivergence online and in response, people were self diagnosing
from tiktoks.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
This person is asking how I got my OSDD diagnosis,
and OSDD is other specified dissociative disorder, and it is
related to DID or dissociative identity disorder, which used to
be called multiple personality disorder. So in short, I am
(01:42):
self diagnosed.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
But usually by the time a TikTok had trickled onto
the site formerly known as Twitter, where I am still
lurking to this day, it was because a supposed and
previously little known symptom of mental illness was going viral.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Lao chuas send you into a fit of rage. You
don't like big spoons. You don't know why, but you
just don't. You have a minor commitment in the afternoon,
so you won't be able to do anything else all day.
You'll get obsessed with.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
And often those symptoms seemed to a lot of people
to be pretty routine experiences of being alive.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Lou chuas send you into a fit of rage or.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Else, they were very specific and weird and therefore funny.
One TikTok that went viral was someone realizing that if
you read a lot as a kid. That was a
sign that you were dissociating from trauma.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
I remember the face that I made when I discovered
that kids who used to read books obsessively as a
child and now sit there and just aimlessly scroll through
social media have just found a better way to disassociate. Yeah,
that's the face, the one you're making right now.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Hashtag associate, hashtag executive dysfunction, hashtag ADHD. To be fair,
this might be a joke, but the top comment on
that video is, oh my god, that makes sense. I
only read books that kept my interest because those are
the only books I could read. Truly. No shade to
that person, and don't add her, but they don't say
where they learned this. And yet, despite that lack of context,
(03:08):
a lot of people shared it because they feel validated
by it. But then, and come on, you know where
this is going. There was a backglass and.
Speaker 5 (03:17):
I'll probably get a lot of hate for this, But
the people who are self diagnosing inaccurately, they're not the
people that are being hurt by this. It's people who
were actually diagnosed with very severe disorders to the degree
that they cannot function, who are not being taken seriously
because of the people who insist they have some random
(03:37):
disorder purely because they saw some random tiktalk about it
by a professional. I've been diagnosed with ADHD, PTSD and
narcissistic personality disorder, and these disorders have ruined my life.
I can barely hold down the job.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Most The pushback to self diagnosing took many forms. There
was hand ringing about impressionable young people, mostly teenage girls.
There was the conservative point of view that this, like pronouns,
was just liberal snowflaking. And then there was the point
of view that self diagnosing people were just posting for attention,
and also that people were gaykeeping mental illness, And then
(04:16):
the professionals entered the chat.
Speaker 6 (04:17):
Diagnosis is also heavily influenced by personal beliefs, emotions, and
preconceived notions.
Speaker 7 (04:23):
This is going to really cloud your judgment. You also
may not be aware of.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
I'm NK and this is basketcase, and I checked my
phone eight thousand times during the making of this episode,
and in this one, I'm asking the internet girlies, what's
wrong with people self diagnosing on the Internet. Isn't it
kind of weird that everyone thinks they've ADHD because of
the content they see on platforms that feed on our attention,
and why is buzzfeeding it? All of that and more
(04:48):
after a little break.
Speaker 6 (04:50):
Wow, person's gonna lot me when I have depression and anxiety.
Speaker 8 (05:03):
Hi.
Speaker 9 (05:03):
I'm nadera GoF Slate, culture writer and audio host and
perhaps online addict relatable.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Which platform are you most addicted to?
Speaker 9 (05:14):
Gosh? I do think TikTok, But I think because I'm
most addicted to TikTok, I'm actually very good about not
going on it. The problem is I have to go
on it for work, so I have to be very
regimented about my TikTok time. And then I would say,
when I am good about not being on TikTok for
hours on end, Instagram really gets me.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
This is Nadira Jah. Yeah, okay. She's a culture writer
for Slate magazine and a frequent guest on In Case
you missed it, one of my favorite podcasts about the Internet.
Speaker 9 (05:46):
I can't necessarily pinpoint it to a year, okay, fair,
but I can say when I first joined TikTok, I
definitely was served mental health stuff right away. There were
also a videos about what it's like to live with
a disorder, So there would be people with dissociative identity
(06:07):
disorder formerly known as multiple personality disorder showing off their
different personalities, and there were some sort of major influencers
in this genre.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Madeira noticed two kinds of content. The first was the
ubiquitous top ten list, top ten reasons you might have
ADHD or whatever.
Speaker 6 (06:27):
Eight signs of ADHD and women that no one ever
talks about, so let's talk about them.
Speaker 9 (06:32):
And it was sort of inescapable. I realized that almost
every other video I was being served on TikTok was
about someone who had recently been diagnosed with ADHD, or
was a video telling me the things I should look
out for as potential signs that I should have an
ADHD diagnosis.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
The other content she noticed was much more specific and
much more intimate, like people documenting the state of the
room six months into depression.
Speaker 8 (07:02):
Oh my god, have you seen this trim where people
are glamorizing their depression homes. I mean, just look at
this bedroom, psich, It's my bedroom and we're going to
clean it up today. It is a true depression bedroom.
As I've stated before in previous videos, I fell into
a really debilitating depression for a.
Speaker 9 (07:25):
While, and you know the watch me clean my depression room,
or people who struggle with anxiety.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
A lot of these videos are POV style, with the
creator narrating to the.
Speaker 9 (07:35):
Screen something along the lines of I think something that
people who have never really struggled with anxiety don't know
or don't understand is and it would be someone's personal
account of how they're feeling, or how their brain works,
or what a specific social situation is like for them.
Like that's all that it takes to be considered a
trustworthy source on TikTok is to just say that it's
(07:57):
something that you have also gone through. And I found
that content to be very eye opening, but it also
was very clearly just one person talking about their personal experience.
It's different than these videos of someone saying, oh, I
was diagnosed in a later stage of my life with ADHD,
and here are the symptoms you should look out for.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
When Adira is describing as the art of discernment, a
kind of media savvy that's necessary pretty much anytime you scroll,
and especially when you're scrolling for information about mental health,
because misinformation about mental health is rampant.
Speaker 9 (08:32):
There was this one article from the British Association for
Counseling in Psychotherapy that quoted two studies.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
One study in an academic journal analyzed the top one
hundred most popular videos about ADHD on the platform.
Speaker 9 (08:44):
And found that fifty two percent of them were classified
as medically misleading and twenty seven percent were based entirely
on personal experience, and only twenty one percent were considered
useful when compared against diagnostic criteria.
Speaker 10 (08:57):
Got it.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
But despite the growing quantity of content that is misleading, inaccurate,
or potentially even damaging, it continues to hit.
Speaker 9 (09:06):
I would be talking to just anyone in my regular
life and they would say, yeah, I saw this one
video on TikTok that said that I might have ADHD.
So then I went to my doctor and I brought
that up with them and got tested, and it turns
out I don't have ADHD. Right, Sometimes you log onto
TikTok and you see a video that's the equivalent of
googling your symptoms for a headache on web md and
thirty seconds later getting the news that you might die,
(09:27):
when in fact you're just having a reaction to a
new cleaning product you decided to try in your apartment.
Or or something like that.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
There are ways to know whether the content you're seeing
has been posted by an actual mental health professional. In
every state. You can look up someone's license, and you
can also make sure a therapist is certified by their
state's licensing board before following them. But let's be real,
that's not how most people use the Internet.
Speaker 9 (09:51):
In terms of YouTube and TikTok, I think that you
could watch a thirty minute YouTube essay that's probably very
well informed with screenshots of legitimate articles, peer reviewed articles,
and things about someone's recent ADHD diagnosis, Right, But are
you more likely to watch that if you didn't even
(10:13):
know this is a problem you might have had before
you walked on or are you more likely to watch
a thirty second to three minute video. Yeah, And so
it seems to me inevitable that a platform that, like
you say, trades in attention that is also a sort
of dog whistle for why kids don't have attention spans anymore,
(10:35):
would be the one that presents the most information, or
at least that has the most people consuming information about
their shortened attention span or about their neurodivergency.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
And one of the reasons we keep seeing this kind
of content from people pretending to be mental health experts
or who at least claim to be presenting real information.
Is that this kind of content performs, It gets views,
and so in some cases, content creators do profit from
creating easily digestible videos, videos that are both oversimplified and hyperbolic.
TikTok is maybe especially good at spreading misinformation because of
(11:11):
this format, because of the short videos and short captions,
and because the app doesn't allow you to post click
through links except in bios, and the videos that are
more likely to go viral are the ones that are
general enough to apply to a wide audience. And then,
of course TikTok, like Our Lives Online, is invariably mediated
by the algorithm, by a feed that's constantly trying to
(11:32):
guess what you want to click on, and that gives
you more of the same of what you've already watched
or engaged with.
Speaker 10 (11:39):
As soon as I see the word ADHD pop up,
I'm like skip SKIPSI.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
This is pe Moskowitz. You might remember them from our
episode on antidepressants. Pe is the author of a newsletter
called mental Health That's h el Health, where in twenty
twenty one they've published an essay called the Buzzfeedification of
Mental Health, referring, of course, to BuzzFeed, the media company
founded by Jonah Peretti in two thousand and six. This
(12:05):
is Pretti giving a talk about BuzzFeed called Everyone Is
Crazy at a conference called Disrupt New York in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 11 (12:11):
It's comforting to think that we're where these unified, predictable people.
But when you actually look at people behaving very differently
on Facebook than on Twitter, people liking different things depending
on the context, people having aspects of various personality disorders
contained within themselves. When you look at that, sometimes it's
a little unsettling. But I think that you should actually
be happy that you have this conflicted nature. It's actually
(12:34):
a good thing, not a bad thing. At BuzzFeed, it's
part of our strategy. We embrace that and make content
for sort of the whole person.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Parretti has said that BuzzFeed's business model was a kind
of business in the front, party in the back approach,
But in the website's early years it was pretty much
all party, mostly listicals about celebrities and pop culture and quizzes,
so many quizzes, which real housewife, which Jonah's brothers in
the city, Which hogwarts ice flights the top, which vacation,
(13:01):
which regional airport, Which McDonald's franchise within a ten mile radius?
Speaker 6 (13:05):
Are you?
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Supposedly this kind of content would drive traffic to the
serious stuff that was eventually also on the site, the
long form journalism. But BuzzFeed started as an algorithm that
found the most popular content on the Internet, and then
it made a name for itself as a platform for
that content. BuzzFeed gave us the viral meme disaster Girl,
(13:28):
and it also broke the news about President Donald Trump
getting peed on, allegedly, and the company also transformed the
way we consume information online, including information about mental health.
But I noticed that you're you're saying, like early twenty
twenty one, and so I'm curious what specifically were you
responding to.
Speaker 10 (13:45):
I mean, I think it was everywhere. Every TikTok I
would see, every Instagram, I would see, every tweet I
would see about mental health, all talked about it in
this like very individualizing, you know, diagnostic way that you know,
it was like an inherent part of your identity, especially
in twenty twenty one, twenty twenty, Like I was dealing
more with my own mental health stuff. I was encountering
(14:06):
so much of that kind of diagnostic framework everywhere I went.
Anyone I would talk to would be like, Oh, well,
it's because you have X, Y and Z disorder and
that is something you need to, like, you know, take seriously.
And if I'd be like, sure, I struggle with AT
tension sometimes and like I've taken adderall and it's helped
me sometimes, but I don't really like identify with the
(14:28):
diagnosis of ADHD, people would be like, yeah, that just
means that, like you hate the idea of being like
differently abled or neurodivergent or whatever, got it, Like you're
in denial of like what is your true self or whatever.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Peas essay starts with the story of how Jonah Peretti,
while still an undergraduate, published an academic paper that would
eventually become the business model for BuzzFeed. In the paper,
Parretti observed that people were assuming and discarding identities faster
and more frequently than they ever had before. Here's a
part of that paper, read by jot A Pretti Ai
that I trained myself on MTV.
Speaker 11 (15:03):
All of these characters may make an appearance in the
course of a two minute video. Newspapers, movies, billboards, and
video games also offer a stunning array of images. Not
only does each of these mediums contain a surprisingly varied
image repertoire, but a late capitalist subject may encounter all
of these mediums in a single day.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
He explains that this visual cacophony of television, magazines and
the baby Internet could be exploited by brands in order
to sell products if those brands knew how to take
advantage of this relationship between identity and buying things To
affirm that identity, his suggestion was for brands to create
an endless buffet of micro identities for consumers to divide
themselves into and later market to with products. This is
(15:46):
like when corporations sell formerly countercultural aesthetics I'm looking at you,
hot topic. It's also why your local target sells pride
and Juneteenth merch embarrassing. Paretti called his paper Capitalism and
Schizophrenia contemporary visual culture and the acceleration of identity formation
and dissolution. Yeah, seriously. He borrowed the metaphor of schizophrenia
(16:07):
from Frederick Jamison, an American literary critic philosopher and political
theorists who wrote back in the nineteen eighties that the
rapid fireway we consumed information would inevitably make people feel fragmented,
so confused, isolated, and disconnected from ourselves in reality, that
our sense of identity and self would vanish. Peretti published
(16:27):
his paper in nineteen ninety six, and ten years later
he founded BuzzFeed, which capitalized on that tendency towards fragmentation,
and with its never ending supply of ad supported who
are you quizzes, BuzzFeed helped make identity itself into something
that could be bought and sold, proving his thesis cut
to the present moment on the Internet that we're all
surfing today and we're asked to identify and then de
(16:50):
identify constantly every few hours or every few minutes as
we scroll through endless feeds of influencers and astrology memes,
targeted ads, and reels about eighty eight associate of identity
disorder and other profit generating content and mix up. In
all of that, there are the ways we present and
market ourselves. Where we once found a sense of identity
in our connection to nature and community, we now find
(17:13):
it in our niche consumer choices, choices that are also
frequently being broadcast on these platforms. As Internet culture writer
Rachel Hampton wrote for Defector, nowhere is that clearer than
on TikTok, where creators try on and throw away identities
as easily as they do. They're shean halls. But what
happens when self diagnosis leads you out of the scroll
(17:36):
hole and into the therapist's office. An actual therapist will
tell us after the break. I think that at least
some of the appeal of this kind of first person
mental health content is that people are looking for confirmation
about whether there's something wrong with them, are they disordered,
(17:57):
or are they normal? So I reached out to psychotherapy.
Marcus Britton Fleming.
Speaker 12 (18:01):
I focus on supporting people with specific tech related mental
health needs.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
As a therapist, digital activists, artist, and founder of the
community based think tank Bandwidth Care. Marcus explores how technology
complicates our lives. He's interested in how it's changed the
way we relate to ourselves and each other, and how
we cope with the way the internet makes us feel.
Sometimes even gets into those things and sessions.
Speaker 7 (18:25):
One of the bumper stickers, so to speak, of the
profession is meet people where they're at. You know, somebody's
having a bad day, empathize with them.
Speaker 12 (18:34):
If somebody is like interested in Pokemon cards, ask them
about it. And I noticed my colleagues will bring up
issues that their clients were having with technology, and one
common response was, well, just tell them to put their
phones down or leave the app, or that's unhealthy.
Speaker 7 (18:52):
They're addicted, and for me, we could be talking about that.
You know. So my thing is like, meet people where
they're at.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Are people coming in having self diagnosed based on things
they've seen on social media?
Speaker 7 (19:03):
All the time.
Speaker 12 (19:03):
Absolutely, a lot of people come to me with questions,
you know, maybe have been on social media and have
seen content about ADHD or attachment styles or trauma or
OCD or autism, and then they'll ask me things like
do I have OCD? Within minutes sometimes of me talking
(19:26):
to them, do I have the thing yeah that I
thought I had, They're almost looking for confirmation from me,
which puts me in a very tricky position.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
It sometimes seemed like patients were hoping to confirm their
suspicions about their diagnosis on the spot. But Marcus moves
more slowly than that. He sees self diagnosis as a
starting point, just the entrance into a deeper conversation.
Speaker 12 (19:48):
Diagnoses carry with them a lot of stigma still, and
especially as a mental health professional, especially as a white
male with a beard who probably will look like Freud
if years.
Speaker 6 (20:00):
You know, So.
Speaker 12 (20:02):
There's there's this authority that I have or that people
see in me.
Speaker 7 (20:08):
So for me to confirm that you have a.
Speaker 12 (20:12):
Diagnosis, that can be really impactful for me to do that.
Speaker 7 (20:16):
At the same time, if somebody's coming.
Speaker 12 (20:18):
In and they're like, you know, I think I have SCD,
I want to hold space for them to think that,
and I want to hold space for them to consider
that and consider what that means.
Speaker 7 (20:30):
So I struggle with it. I struggle with this conversation,
especially when it happens officially.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
So when I asked him how the diagnosis process happens officially,
Marcus described a delicate, exploratory conversation with people who are
coming into their sessions already informed or misinformed about a
potential diagnosis and what it might mean.
Speaker 12 (20:49):
The first thing that people often uncover is peel Off
is stigmok, Like, what does it mean for me to
say I need help?
Speaker 7 (20:58):
What does it mean for me to say that this
is hard, and I.
Speaker 12 (21:02):
Just think the way that other people are doing that
more so now is I could have OCD because I
read something about it on the Instagram. That's just the
vehicle at the moment for a lot of people. And
that's why I don't immediately like come down on people
or psycho educate people. Even when they tell me that
(21:23):
they have something, that's usually the phrase I have something.
You know that I have this thing.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Understanding mental illness is something you have or something you
are instead of something happening to you is tricky because
health is subjective and contextual and based on a set
of assumptions about what's considered normal or the assumption that
there's a normal at all. But diagnostic labels can act
as a path to the stories people are telling about themselves,
(21:51):
and that's what Marcus is interested in.
Speaker 12 (21:52):
Okay, So example, let's say somebody comes in for like
the third session, They're like, I'm really think I have
bipolar disorder.
Speaker 7 (22:03):
The first thing I maybe would ask you is.
Speaker 12 (22:04):
Like, well, how do you feel thinking or knowing that
you have bipolar disorder?
Speaker 7 (22:09):
I might even ask the question like when did you
first start thinking that you have bipolar disorder.
Speaker 12 (22:15):
When did you first learn about I'm listening for what
other people tell them about themselves, okay, when they're growing up.
I'm listening for self pathologizing.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Is there a distinction between self pathologizing and self diagnosing, Well.
Speaker 12 (22:31):
Self diagnosing doesn't always mean that you think there's something
wrong with yourself or there's something bad about yourself.
Speaker 7 (22:38):
It could just mean I have these symptoms.
Speaker 8 (22:40):
Oh.
Speaker 12 (22:41):
Self pathologizing is like, oh, these things I do, they
are bad.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Okay. This is how I understand the distinction. Self diagnosing
means finding a framework to make sense of your experiences,
while self pathologizing is more about the urge to eradicate
from yourself whatever it is that marks as different, the
urge to fix it. Marcus says both can happen at
the same time. But there's also this other thing I'm
(23:07):
noticing that to self diagnose is to name a struggle.
It's like asking, could it be that if I'm not
like everyone else, then maybe I might deserve special treatment?
And in this way, self diagnosis can also be a
path towards understanding that you need support, and it can
also be a framework towards understanding exactly what kinds of
(23:28):
support you need. An official diagnostic label from a clinician
can be the most efficient way to access that support,
in the form of a prescription, a kind of therapy,
or access to a like minded community.
Speaker 12 (23:38):
I think that a lot of these labels are things
that people pick up so they can put them back down.
We can't let something go without picking it up, and
the first thing we pick up is, oh, my gosh,
I might have this thing that's wrong with me. That's
usually the first place we go. A lot of people
are picking it up right now. Yeah, we're questioning.
Speaker 7 (23:58):
And evaluating what it means to be seeing or insane.
Speaker 12 (24:02):
Where some of us are identifying with a diagnosis, some
of us are not. Some of us are identifying as insane,
some of us are identifying as mad, some of us
are not.
Speaker 7 (24:12):
I think we're trying to understand.
Speaker 12 (24:17):
I don't think I'm in the position to value whether
or not.
Speaker 7 (24:21):
That's good or bad in general. But I see what
the brain is doing.
Speaker 12 (24:27):
I see what our collective brains are doing when we're isolated,
when we're without close friends or community. A diagnosis can
feel like a warm blanket, you know, it can feel
like you are part of a tradition of people that
have some people wrong with them that understand what that
thing is.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
So the people with the most cynical takes about why
so many other people are loudly self diagnosing have suggested
that people are just co opting stigmatized identities for clout
that disability is being and I quote gentrified. But a
wave of self diagnosing is inevitable when many many people
don't have access to affordable health care, let alone affordable
(25:13):
mental health support, and an official clinical diagnosis can be
a complicated process, especially for gender minorities, people of color,
and poor people. People from those groups are more likely
to have a mental disorder that is undiagnosed. Here's Nadira
from the top of the episode.
Speaker 9 (25:30):
So all this actually stems from the fact that there
is bias in our medical system and our health practices.
And I do think it's interesting that that has upset
some people, or offled some feathers or made some people
feel uncomfortable. But I don't know. I'm always going to
be I think, compassionate towards people. But I also just
(25:53):
think that it's because the Internet is just an extension
of us, and I care about people, and I know
that people are diverse, and I know that not everyone
goes in with negative intentions, Like some people just want
to feel heard, you know, they just go on TikTok
because they want something that will make them laugh or
something that will resonate. And maybe that thing is if
(26:14):
you've been struggling, Yeah, then I might know the reason why, right,
and what's more comforting but also slippery slopey than that.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
When Marcus said earlier that people want to belong to
a class of people who understand their experiences, I thought
of all the ways that the process of self diagnosis
has been taking place online since the early days of
the Internet. On forums for neurodiversion and trans and mad
and chronically ill and disabled people. These are groups of
people who've established a long tradition of helping each other
(26:45):
make meaning of symptoms and who are practiced at sharing
tips about how to cope or advice about how to
talk to doctors in order to get the kind of
care you want. Because, as Mischa Fraser Carol, the author
of Mad World, put it, doctors may hoard resources and information,
but state medical or psychiatric authority is not the precursor
to understanding ourselves.
Speaker 9 (27:07):
I think that what's really frustrating about mental health is
that it is so unclear and so untreated just institutionally,
that where else would you go if you can't afford
a therapist, Where else would you go if someone has
been telling you no, no, no, you're fine, you're fine
your whole life, when you definitely do not feel fine.
(27:28):
Right And so at the same time, I can't necessarily
blame people for wanting to use this open air stadium
of unvetted information as a place to start to figure
something out, to maybe latch onto.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
As so much of our social lives continue to be
mediated by the advertising and data mining platforms that we
call social media, and because so much of the social
technology we rely on to feel connected doesn't actually make
us feel less lonely, it makes sense that we latch
onto simple explanations for why we feel crazy. And it
makes sense we grasp but identity categories that help us
(28:05):
feel anchored, stable, and whole at a time when an
inherent sense of self feels really hard to hang onto,
and when experiencing real community feels increasingly out of reach.
Of course, our diagnoses have become the micro communities we
find safety and meaning in. I went into this episode
thinking that that's a good thing that people feel seen
(28:25):
and understood and represented, and that maybe so many people
identifying with this content and sharing it could lead to
mental illnesses being destigmatized. But therapists Marcus Fleming didn't agree
with me, and pe Moscowitz also thought that that line
of questioning was missing the point.
Speaker 10 (28:42):
I think it's good that people can be honest about
not feeling well mentally. I think that it's good that
we have normalized talking about that kind of stuff, but
that operates as a kind of stand in for what's
actually needed, the kind of pull awareness and communal awareness
that's actually needed in terms of why we all feel
(29:05):
this way.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
So as long as we treat mental illness as just
another aspect of individual identity, we won't see ourselves as
part of a larger pattern, both on the Internet and
in real life.
Speaker 10 (29:17):
If we can only see ourselves as aligned with other
people who have ADHD or other people who have depression,
or whatever the diagnosis might be, then it becomes much
harder to realize that the person down the road who
has a different disorder is actually struggling with the same
things that you are. Just they're manifesting differently. Every few
(29:38):
years we collectively realize that we're all in the same boat,
whether it was the protests during twenty to twenty over
police violence or whether it's Palestine protests. Now, there are
these moments where, like collectively we all go, wait a minute,
the world seems fucked up and we should do something
(29:59):
about it.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
And the cooperation required to change these systems isn't something
that can be branded, repackaged, or sold. Basket Case is
a production of molten Heart and iHeart Podcasts. This series
is hosted, produced, and sound designed by me NK Nicole Kelly.
(30:23):
I co created the show with Jasmine J. T. Green,
who's also our executive producer. Production assistance by Siona Petros
and Immani Leonard. Adrian Lilly is our mixed engineer. Our
theme is blue and orange by Command Jasmine. Our show
art was created by Sinay Rolson, fact checking by Serrita Soln.
Legal services provided by Rowan Maren and File. Our executive
(30:46):
producer from iHeart Podcasts is Lindsay Hoffman.
Speaker 6 (30:49):
Is gonna want me, Prace's gonna want me? What Percey's
gonna want me? When I have to pretch you, the
na
Hey, it's kay. Basket Case gets into some heavy topics
about mental health. But keep in mind that I'm not
a mental health professional. So in the description of this
and every episode, I'll leave you a list of relevant
resources and links to the things I'm reading, and while
you're listening, take care. So, in one way, they started
(00:20):
during the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
This is my depression room. It's been like those for.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
For full transparency, I had to log off Instagram around
the time my feed filled up with black squares in
twenty twenty. And while I loved TikTok while I had it,
I simply do not possess the self control required to
have an app like that on my phone. Okay, I
just don't. So I'm not what you would call chronically
online derogatorily, I have recently touched the Blade of Grass.
(00:49):
But even when I'm technically logged off, I still know
what the very online are talking about because I also
love consuming media about the Internet. And so when this
phenomenon trickled from TikTok to Instagram and then to the
culture writers and Internet journalists, I noticed in the depths
of the pandemic, content creators were posting about mental illness
(01:13):
and neurodivergence online and in response, people were self diagnosing
from tiktoks.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
This person is asking how I got my OSDD diagnosis,
and OSDD is other specified dissociative disorder, and it is
related to DID or dissociative identity disorder, which used to
be called multiple personality disorder. So in short, I am
(01:42):
self diagnosed.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
But usually by the time a TikTok had trickled onto
the site formerly known as Twitter, where I am still
lurking to this day, it was because a supposed and
previously little known symptom of mental illness was going viral.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Lao chuas send you into a fit of rage. You
don't like big spoons. You don't know why, but you
just don't. You have a minor commitment in the afternoon,
so you won't be able to do anything else all day.
You'll get obsessed with.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
And often those symptoms seemed to a lot of people
to be pretty routine experiences of being alive.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Lou chuas send you into a fit of rage or.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Else, they were very specific and weird and therefore funny.
One TikTok that went viral was someone realizing that if
you read a lot as a kid. That was a
sign that you were dissociating from trauma.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
I remember the face that I made when I discovered
that kids who used to read books obsessively as a
child and now sit there and just aimlessly scroll through
social media have just found a better way to disassociate. Yeah,
that's the face, the one you're making right now.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Hashtag associate, hashtag executive dysfunction, hashtag ADHD. To be fair,
this might be a joke, but the top comment on
that video is, oh my god, that makes sense. I
only read books that kept my interest because those are
the only books I could read. Truly. No shade to
that person, and don't add her, but they don't say
where they learned this. And yet, despite that lack of context,
(03:08):
a lot of people shared it because they feel validated
by it. But then, and come on, you know where
this is going. There was a backglass and.
Speaker 5 (03:17):
I'll probably get a lot of hate for this, But
the people who are self diagnosing inaccurately, they're not the
people that are being hurt by this. It's people who
were actually diagnosed with very severe disorders to the degree
that they cannot function, who are not being taken seriously
because of the people who insist they have some random
(03:37):
disorder purely because they saw some random tiktalk about it
by a professional. I've been diagnosed with ADHD, PTSD and
narcissistic personality disorder, and these disorders have ruined my life.
I can barely hold down the job.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Most The pushback to self diagnosing took many forms. There
was hand ringing about impressionable young people, mostly teenage girls.
There was the conservative point of view that this, like pronouns,
was just liberal snowflaking. And then there was the point
of view that self diagnosing people were just posting for attention,
and also that people were gaykeeping mental illness, And then
(04:16):
the professionals entered the chat.
Speaker 6 (04:17):
Diagnosis is also heavily influenced by personal beliefs, emotions, and
preconceived notions.
Speaker 7 (04:23):
This is going to really cloud your judgment. You also
may not be aware of.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
I'm NK and this is basketcase, and I checked my
phone eight thousand times during the making of this episode,
and in this one, I'm asking the internet girlies, what's
wrong with people self diagnosing on the Internet. Isn't it
kind of weird that everyone thinks they've ADHD because of
the content they see on platforms that feed on our attention,
and why is buzzfeeding it? All of that and more
(04:48):
after a little break.
Speaker 6 (04:50):
Wow, person's gonna lot me when I have depression and anxiety.
Speaker 8 (05:03):
Hi.
Speaker 9 (05:03):
I'm nadera GoF Slate, culture writer and audio host and
perhaps online addict relatable.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Which platform are you most addicted to?
Speaker 9 (05:14):
Gosh? I do think TikTok, But I think because I'm
most addicted to TikTok, I'm actually very good about not
going on it. The problem is I have to go
on it for work, so I have to be very
regimented about my TikTok time. And then I would say,
when I am good about not being on TikTok for
hours on end, Instagram really gets me.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
This is Nadira Jah. Yeah, okay. She's a culture writer
for Slate magazine and a frequent guest on In Case
you missed it, one of my favorite podcasts about the Internet.
Speaker 9 (05:46):
I can't necessarily pinpoint it to a year, okay, fair,
but I can say when I first joined TikTok, I
definitely was served mental health stuff right away. There were
also a videos about what it's like to live with
a disorder, So there would be people with dissociative identity
(06:07):
disorder formerly known as multiple personality disorder showing off their
different personalities, and there were some sort of major influencers
in this genre.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Madeira noticed two kinds of content. The first was the
ubiquitous top ten list, top ten reasons you might have
ADHD or whatever.
Speaker 6 (06:27):
Eight signs of ADHD and women that no one ever
talks about, so let's talk about them.
Speaker 9 (06:32):
And it was sort of inescapable. I realized that almost
every other video I was being served on TikTok was
about someone who had recently been diagnosed with ADHD, or
was a video telling me the things I should look
out for as potential signs that I should have an
ADHD diagnosis.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
The other content she noticed was much more specific and
much more intimate, like people documenting the state of the
room six months into depression.
Speaker 8 (07:02):
Oh my god, have you seen this trim where people
are glamorizing their depression homes. I mean, just look at
this bedroom, psich, It's my bedroom and we're going to
clean it up today. It is a true depression bedroom.
As I've stated before in previous videos, I fell into
a really debilitating depression for a.
Speaker 9 (07:25):
While, and you know the watch me clean my depression room,
or people who struggle with anxiety.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
A lot of these videos are POV style, with the
creator narrating to the.
Speaker 9 (07:35):
Screen something along the lines of I think something that
people who have never really struggled with anxiety don't know
or don't understand is and it would be someone's personal
account of how they're feeling, or how their brain works,
or what a specific social situation is like for them.
Like that's all that it takes to be considered a
trustworthy source on TikTok is to just say that it's
(07:57):
something that you have also gone through. And I found
that content to be very eye opening, but it also
was very clearly just one person talking about their personal experience.
It's different than these videos of someone saying, oh, I
was diagnosed in a later stage of my life with ADHD,
and here are the symptoms you should look out for.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
When Adira is describing as the art of discernment, a
kind of media savvy that's necessary pretty much anytime you scroll,
and especially when you're scrolling for information about mental health,
because misinformation about mental health is rampant.
Speaker 9 (08:32):
There was this one article from the British Association for
Counseling in Psychotherapy that quoted two studies.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
One study in an academic journal analyzed the top one
hundred most popular videos about ADHD on the platform.
Speaker 9 (08:44):
And found that fifty two percent of them were classified
as medically misleading and twenty seven percent were based entirely
on personal experience, and only twenty one percent were considered
useful when compared against diagnostic criteria.
Speaker 10 (08:57):
Got it.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
But despite the growing quantity of content that is misleading, inaccurate,
or potentially even damaging, it continues to hit.
Speaker 9 (09:06):
I would be talking to just anyone in my regular
life and they would say, yeah, I saw this one
video on TikTok that said that I might have ADHD.
So then I went to my doctor and I brought
that up with them and got tested, and it turns
out I don't have ADHD. Right, Sometimes you log onto
TikTok and you see a video that's the equivalent of
googling your symptoms for a headache on web md and
thirty seconds later getting the news that you might die,
(09:27):
when in fact you're just having a reaction to a
new cleaning product you decided to try in your apartment.
Or or something like that.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
There are ways to know whether the content you're seeing
has been posted by an actual mental health professional. In
every state. You can look up someone's license, and you
can also make sure a therapist is certified by their
state's licensing board before following them. But let's be real,
that's not how most people use the Internet.
Speaker 9 (09:51):
In terms of YouTube and TikTok, I think that you
could watch a thirty minute YouTube essay that's probably very
well informed with screenshots of legitimate articles, peer reviewed articles,
and things about someone's recent ADHD diagnosis, Right, But are
you more likely to watch that if you didn't even
(10:13):
know this is a problem you might have had before
you walked on or are you more likely to watch
a thirty second to three minute video. Yeah, And so
it seems to me inevitable that a platform that, like
you say, trades in attention that is also a sort
of dog whistle for why kids don't have attention spans anymore,
(10:35):
would be the one that presents the most information, or
at least that has the most people consuming information about
their shortened attention span or about their neurodivergency.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
And one of the reasons we keep seeing this kind
of content from people pretending to be mental health experts
or who at least claim to be presenting real information.
Is that this kind of content performs, It gets views,
and so in some cases, content creators do profit from
creating easily digestible videos, videos that are both oversimplified and hyperbolic.
TikTok is maybe especially good at spreading misinformation because of
(11:11):
this format, because of the short videos and short captions,
and because the app doesn't allow you to post click
through links except in bios, and the videos that are
more likely to go viral are the ones that are
general enough to apply to a wide audience. And then,
of course TikTok, like Our Lives Online, is invariably mediated
by the algorithm, by a feed that's constantly trying to
(11:32):
guess what you want to click on, and that gives
you more of the same of what you've already watched
or engaged with.
Speaker 10 (11:39):
As soon as I see the word ADHD pop up,
I'm like skip SKIPSI.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
This is pe Moskowitz. You might remember them from our
episode on antidepressants. Pe is the author of a newsletter
called mental Health That's h el Health, where in twenty
twenty one they've published an essay called the Buzzfeedification of
Mental Health, referring, of course, to BuzzFeed, the media company
founded by Jonah Peretti in two thousand and six. This
(12:05):
is Pretti giving a talk about BuzzFeed called Everyone Is
Crazy at a conference called Disrupt New York in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 11 (12:11):
It's comforting to think that we're where these unified, predictable people.
But when you actually look at people behaving very differently
on Facebook than on Twitter, people liking different things depending
on the context, people having aspects of various personality disorders
contained within themselves. When you look at that, sometimes it's
a little unsettling. But I think that you should actually
be happy that you have this conflicted nature. It's actually
(12:34):
a good thing, not a bad thing. At BuzzFeed, it's
part of our strategy. We embrace that and make content
for sort of the whole person.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Parretti has said that BuzzFeed's business model was a kind
of business in the front, party in the back approach,
But in the website's early years it was pretty much
all party, mostly listicals about celebrities and pop culture and quizzes,
so many quizzes, which real housewife, which Jonah's brothers in
the city, Which hogwarts ice flights the top, which vacation,
(13:01):
which regional airport, Which McDonald's franchise within a ten mile radius?
Speaker 6 (13:05):
Are you?
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Supposedly this kind of content would drive traffic to the
serious stuff that was eventually also on the site, the
long form journalism. But BuzzFeed started as an algorithm that
found the most popular content on the Internet, and then
it made a name for itself as a platform for
that content. BuzzFeed gave us the viral meme disaster Girl,
(13:28):
and it also broke the news about President Donald Trump
getting peed on, allegedly, and the company also transformed the
way we consume information online, including information about mental health.
But I noticed that you're you're saying, like early twenty
twenty one, and so I'm curious what specifically were you
responding to.
Speaker 10 (13:45):
I mean, I think it was everywhere. Every TikTok I
would see, every Instagram, I would see, every tweet I
would see about mental health, all talked about it in
this like very individualizing, you know, diagnostic way that you know,
it was like an inherent part of your identity, especially
in twenty twenty one, twenty twenty, Like I was dealing
more with my own mental health stuff. I was encountering
(14:06):
so much of that kind of diagnostic framework everywhere I went.
Anyone I would talk to would be like, Oh, well,
it's because you have X, Y and Z disorder and
that is something you need to, like, you know, take seriously.
And if I'd be like, sure, I struggle with AT
tension sometimes and like I've taken adderall and it's helped
me sometimes, but I don't really like identify with the
(14:28):
diagnosis of ADHD, people would be like, yeah, that just
means that, like you hate the idea of being like
differently abled or neurodivergent or whatever, got it, Like you're
in denial of like what is your true self or whatever.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Peas essay starts with the story of how Jonah Peretti,
while still an undergraduate, published an academic paper that would
eventually become the business model for BuzzFeed. In the paper,
Parretti observed that people were assuming and discarding identities faster
and more frequently than they ever had before. Here's a
part of that paper, read by jot A Pretti Ai
that I trained myself on MTV.
Speaker 11 (15:03):
All of these characters may make an appearance in the
course of a two minute video. Newspapers, movies, billboards, and
video games also offer a stunning array of images. Not
only does each of these mediums contain a surprisingly varied
image repertoire, but a late capitalist subject may encounter all
of these mediums in a single day.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
He explains that this visual cacophony of television, magazines and
the baby Internet could be exploited by brands in order
to sell products if those brands knew how to take
advantage of this relationship between identity and buying things To
affirm that identity, his suggestion was for brands to create
an endless buffet of micro identities for consumers to divide
themselves into and later market to with products. This is
(15:46):
like when corporations sell formerly countercultural aesthetics I'm looking at you,
hot topic. It's also why your local target sells pride
and Juneteenth merch embarrassing. Paretti called his paper Capitalism and
Schizophrenia contemporary visual culture and the acceleration of identity formation
and dissolution. Yeah, seriously. He borrowed the metaphor of schizophrenia
(16:07):
from Frederick Jamison, an American literary critic philosopher and political
theorists who wrote back in the nineteen eighties that the
rapid fireway we consumed information would inevitably make people feel fragmented,
so confused, isolated, and disconnected from ourselves in reality, that
our sense of identity and self would vanish. Peretti published
(16:27):
his paper in nineteen ninety six, and ten years later
he founded BuzzFeed, which capitalized on that tendency towards fragmentation,
and with its never ending supply of ad supported who
are you quizzes, BuzzFeed helped make identity itself into something
that could be bought and sold, proving his thesis cut
to the present moment on the Internet that we're all
surfing today and we're asked to identify and then de
(16:50):
identify constantly every few hours or every few minutes as
we scroll through endless feeds of influencers and astrology memes,
targeted ads, and reels about eighty eight associate of identity
disorder and other profit generating content and mix up. In
all of that, there are the ways we present and
market ourselves. Where we once found a sense of identity
in our connection to nature and community, we now find
(17:13):
it in our niche consumer choices, choices that are also
frequently being broadcast on these platforms. As Internet culture writer
Rachel Hampton wrote for Defector, nowhere is that clearer than
on TikTok, where creators try on and throw away identities
as easily as they do. They're shean halls. But what
happens when self diagnosis leads you out of the scroll
(17:36):
hole and into the therapist's office. An actual therapist will
tell us after the break. I think that at least
some of the appeal of this kind of first person
mental health content is that people are looking for confirmation
about whether there's something wrong with them, are they disordered,
(17:57):
or are they normal? So I reached out to psychotherapy.
Marcus Britton Fleming.
Speaker 12 (18:01):
I focus on supporting people with specific tech related mental
health needs.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
As a therapist, digital activists, artist, and founder of the
community based think tank Bandwidth Care. Marcus explores how technology
complicates our lives. He's interested in how it's changed the
way we relate to ourselves and each other, and how
we cope with the way the internet makes us feel.
Sometimes even gets into those things and sessions.
Speaker 7 (18:25):
One of the bumper stickers, so to speak, of the
profession is meet people where they're at. You know, somebody's
having a bad day, empathize with them.
Speaker 12 (18:34):
If somebody is like interested in Pokemon cards, ask them
about it. And I noticed my colleagues will bring up
issues that their clients were having with technology, and one
common response was, well, just tell them to put their
phones down or leave the app, or that's unhealthy.
Speaker 7 (18:52):
They're addicted, and for me, we could be talking about that.
You know. So my thing is like, meet people where
they're at.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Are people coming in having self diagnosed based on things
they've seen on social media?
Speaker 7 (19:03):
All the time.
Speaker 12 (19:03):
Absolutely, a lot of people come to me with questions,
you know, maybe have been on social media and have
seen content about ADHD or attachment styles or trauma or
OCD or autism, and then they'll ask me things like
do I have OCD? Within minutes sometimes of me talking
(19:26):
to them, do I have the thing yeah that I
thought I had, They're almost looking for confirmation from me,
which puts me in a very tricky position.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
It sometimes seemed like patients were hoping to confirm their
suspicions about their diagnosis on the spot. But Marcus moves
more slowly than that. He sees self diagnosis as a
starting point, just the entrance into a deeper conversation.
Speaker 12 (19:48):
Diagnoses carry with them a lot of stigma still, and
especially as a mental health professional, especially as a white
male with a beard who probably will look like Freud
if years.
Speaker 6 (20:00):
You know, So.
Speaker 12 (20:02):
There's there's this authority that I have or that people
see in me.
Speaker 7 (20:08):
So for me to confirm that you have a.
Speaker 12 (20:12):
Diagnosis, that can be really impactful for me to do that.
Speaker 7 (20:16):
At the same time, if somebody's coming.
Speaker 12 (20:18):
In and they're like, you know, I think I have SCD,
I want to hold space for them to think that,
and I want to hold space for them to consider
that and consider what that means.
Speaker 7 (20:30):
So I struggle with it. I struggle with this conversation,
especially when it happens officially.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
So when I asked him how the diagnosis process happens officially,
Marcus described a delicate, exploratory conversation with people who are
coming into their sessions already informed or misinformed about a
potential diagnosis and what it might mean.
Speaker 12 (20:49):
The first thing that people often uncover is peel Off
is stigmok, Like, what does it mean for me to
say I need help?
Speaker 7 (20:58):
What does it mean for me to say that this
is hard, and I.
Speaker 12 (21:02):
Just think the way that other people are doing that
more so now is I could have OCD because I
read something about it on the Instagram. That's just the
vehicle at the moment for a lot of people. And
that's why I don't immediately like come down on people
or psycho educate people. Even when they tell me that
(21:23):
they have something, that's usually the phrase I have something.
You know that I have this thing.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Understanding mental illness is something you have or something you
are instead of something happening to you is tricky because
health is subjective and contextual and based on a set
of assumptions about what's considered normal or the assumption that
there's a normal at all. But diagnostic labels can act
as a path to the stories people are telling about themselves,
(21:51):
and that's what Marcus is interested in.
Speaker 12 (21:52):
Okay, So example, let's say somebody comes in for like
the third session, They're like, I'm really think I have
bipolar disorder.
Speaker 7 (22:03):
The first thing I maybe would ask you is.
Speaker 12 (22:04):
Like, well, how do you feel thinking or knowing that
you have bipolar disorder?
Speaker 7 (22:09):
I might even ask the question like when did you
first start thinking that you have bipolar disorder.
Speaker 12 (22:15):
When did you first learn about I'm listening for what
other people tell them about themselves, okay, when they're growing up.
I'm listening for self pathologizing.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Is there a distinction between self pathologizing and self diagnosing, Well.
Speaker 12 (22:31):
Self diagnosing doesn't always mean that you think there's something
wrong with yourself or there's something bad about yourself.
Speaker 7 (22:38):
It could just mean I have these symptoms.
Speaker 8 (22:40):
Oh.
Speaker 12 (22:41):
Self pathologizing is like, oh, these things I do, they
are bad.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Okay. This is how I understand the distinction. Self diagnosing
means finding a framework to make sense of your experiences,
while self pathologizing is more about the urge to eradicate
from yourself whatever it is that marks as different, the
urge to fix it. Marcus says both can happen at
the same time. But there's also this other thing I'm
(23:07):
noticing that to self diagnose is to name a struggle.
It's like asking, could it be that if I'm not
like everyone else, then maybe I might deserve special treatment?
And in this way, self diagnosis can also be a
path towards understanding that you need support, and it can
also be a framework towards understanding exactly what kinds of
(23:28):
support you need. An official diagnostic label from a clinician
can be the most efficient way to access that support,
in the form of a prescription, a kind of therapy,
or access to a like minded community.
Speaker 12 (23:38):
I think that a lot of these labels are things
that people pick up so they can put them back down.
We can't let something go without picking it up, and
the first thing we pick up is, oh, my gosh,
I might have this thing that's wrong with me. That's
usually the first place we go. A lot of people
are picking it up right now. Yeah, we're questioning.
Speaker 7 (23:58):
And evaluating what it means to be seeing or insane.
Speaker 12 (24:02):
Where some of us are identifying with a diagnosis, some
of us are not. Some of us are identifying as insane,
some of us are identifying as mad, some of us
are not.
Speaker 7 (24:12):
I think we're trying to understand.
Speaker 12 (24:17):
I don't think I'm in the position to value whether
or not.
Speaker 7 (24:21):
That's good or bad in general. But I see what
the brain is doing.
Speaker 12 (24:27):
I see what our collective brains are doing when we're isolated,
when we're without close friends or community. A diagnosis can
feel like a warm blanket, you know, it can feel
like you are part of a tradition of people that
have some people wrong with them that understand what that
thing is.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
So the people with the most cynical takes about why
so many other people are loudly self diagnosing have suggested
that people are just co opting stigmatized identities for clout
that disability is being and I quote gentrified. But a
wave of self diagnosing is inevitable when many many people
don't have access to affordable health care, let alone affordable
(25:13):
mental health support, and an official clinical diagnosis can be
a complicated process, especially for gender minorities, people of color,
and poor people. People from those groups are more likely
to have a mental disorder that is undiagnosed. Here's Nadira
from the top of the episode.
Speaker 9 (25:30):
So all this actually stems from the fact that there
is bias in our medical system and our health practices.
And I do think it's interesting that that has upset
some people, or offled some feathers or made some people
feel uncomfortable. But I don't know. I'm always going to
be I think, compassionate towards people. But I also just
(25:53):
think that it's because the Internet is just an extension
of us, and I care about people, and I know
that people are diverse, and I know that not everyone
goes in with negative intentions, Like some people just want
to feel heard, you know, they just go on TikTok
because they want something that will make them laugh or
something that will resonate. And maybe that thing is if
(26:14):
you've been struggling, Yeah, then I might know the reason why, right,
and what's more comforting but also slippery slopey than that.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
When Marcus said earlier that people want to belong to
a class of people who understand their experiences, I thought
of all the ways that the process of self diagnosis
has been taking place online since the early days of
the Internet. On forums for neurodiversion and trans and mad
and chronically ill and disabled people. These are groups of
people who've established a long tradition of helping each other
(26:45):
make meaning of symptoms and who are practiced at sharing
tips about how to cope or advice about how to
talk to doctors in order to get the kind of
care you want. Because, as Mischa Fraser Carol, the author
of Mad World, put it, doctors may hoard resources and information,
but state medical or psychiatric authority is not the precursor
to understanding ourselves.
Speaker 9 (27:07):
I think that what's really frustrating about mental health is
that it is so unclear and so untreated just institutionally,
that where else would you go if you can't afford
a therapist, Where else would you go if someone has
been telling you no, no, no, you're fine, you're fine
your whole life, when you definitely do not feel fine.
(27:28):
Right And so at the same time, I can't necessarily
blame people for wanting to use this open air stadium
of unvetted information as a place to start to figure
something out, to maybe latch onto.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
As so much of our social lives continue to be
mediated by the advertising and data mining platforms that we
call social media, and because so much of the social
technology we rely on to feel connected doesn't actually make
us feel less lonely, it makes sense that we latch
onto simple explanations for why we feel crazy. And it
makes sense we grasp but identity categories that help us
(28:05):
feel anchored, stable, and whole at a time when an
inherent sense of self feels really hard to hang onto,
and when experiencing real community feels increasingly out of reach.
Of course, our diagnoses have become the micro communities we
find safety and meaning in. I went into this episode
thinking that that's a good thing that people feel seen
(28:25):
and understood and represented, and that maybe so many people
identifying with this content and sharing it could lead to
mental illnesses being destigmatized. But therapists Marcus Fleming didn't agree
with me, and pe Moscowitz also thought that that line
of questioning was missing the point.
Speaker 10 (28:42):
I think it's good that people can be honest about
not feeling well mentally. I think that it's good that
we have normalized talking about that kind of stuff, but
that operates as a kind of stand in for what's
actually needed, the kind of pull awareness and communal awareness
that's actually needed in terms of why we all feel
(29:05):
this way.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
So as long as we treat mental illness as just
another aspect of individual identity, we won't see ourselves as
part of a larger pattern, both on the Internet and
in real life.
Speaker 10 (29:17):
If we can only see ourselves as aligned with other
people who have ADHD or other people who have depression,
or whatever the diagnosis might be, then it becomes much
harder to realize that the person down the road who
has a different disorder is actually struggling with the same
things that you are. Just they're manifesting differently. Every few
(29:38):
years we collectively realize that we're all in the same boat,
whether it was the protests during twenty to twenty over
police violence or whether it's Palestine protests. Now, there are
these moments where, like collectively we all go, wait a minute,
the world seems fucked up and we should do something
(29:59):
about it.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
And the cooperation required to change these systems isn't something
that can be branded, repackaged, or sold. Basket Case is
a production of molten Heart and iHeart Podcasts. This series
is hosted, produced, and sound designed by me NK Nicole Kelly.
(30:23):
I co created the show with Jasmine J. T. Green,
who's also our executive producer. Production assistance by Siona Petros
and Immani Leonard. Adrian Lilly is our mixed engineer. Our
theme is blue and orange by Command Jasmine. Our show
art was created by Sinay Rolson, fact checking by Serrita Soln.
Legal services provided by Rowan Maren and File. Our executive
(30:46):
producer from iHeart Podcasts is Lindsay Hoffman.
Speaker 6 (30:49):
Is gonna want me, Prace's gonna want me? What Percey's
gonna want me? When I have to pretch you, the
na
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