CHARBONNEAU – Trendy new psychiatric illnesses

HAVE YOU NOTICED ads on social media that invite you to diagnose your mental health?

Here’s one I’ve seen that assumes that I am on the autism spectrum:

“Discover Your Place On The Autism Spectrum

“Get clear, personalized insights and strategies to better understand yourself.

*In a 3-month study, 96% of users felt more understood and confident after learning about their autism traits.”

Such ads are part the growth in “predatory” mental health advertising that encourages people to self-diagnose themselves or “identify with” mental illness.

Dr. Sami Timimi has noticed that psychiatric illnesses have become more like consumer brands than medical diseases:

“As a child and adolescent psychiatrist, I was also noticing a shift toward more young people and/or their parents, teachers, friends and other professionals imagining they had a mental disorder that needed diagnosing (Globe and Mail Sept 13, 2025).”

The isolation of COVID-19 increased the anxiety and distress, especially in young people.  A 2021 UNICEF report estimated that 1 in 7 adolescents worldwide experienced mental health issues intensified by the pandemic.

Dr. Timimi noticed the gloom of COVID-19 in her own daughter, Zoe.

“Zoe, who was 24 at the time, was in one of those nihilistic moods. Her generally happy-go-lucky predisposition was now often punctuated by pessimism. She was struggling to find a stable job, feel a sense of purpose, and imagine a better life awaited her. She explained that many of her friends and friends of friends felt the same way. An invisible blanket of humdrum gloom and despondency had replaced the ardour and energy of youth. They were getting diagnosed with ADHD, trauma, depression, anxiety, PTSD, autism and often several such diagnoses.”

Young girls are especially susceptible. They see videos on TikTok where creators self-identify as having various “illnesses” such as ADHD. The impressionable viewers then act out the symptoms, just as described by the content creator, resulting in a sudden outbreak of the illness.

The rise of psychiatric illnesses is a sign of our times. Yet, diagnosis is tricky because there is no blood test, brain scan, or genetic marker that can definitively diagnose them. Mental health is hard to define.

“You see, there is a truth that we (in the mental-health business) hope no one will notice – we literally don’t know what we are talking about when it comes to mental health,” says Dr. Timimi.

“They are all subjective. They are constructed by a belief, an opinion, an idea. They are not phenomena that lend themselves to sitting in the world of objective facts in the same way that a broken bone does.”

No doubt that there is something truly wrong, but often the trendy labels mask real problems such as anxiety over war, poverty, and lack of future prospects.

Seen through the lens of history, these labels become clear in their misdiagnosis.

In the 19th century, hysteria was widely diagnosed in women who showed a broad range of distressing symptoms: fatigue, anxiety, mood swings, seizures, even chronic pain.

The diagnosis of hysteria often masked underlying problems such as epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, and migraines. Also, women were institutionalized not because of any mental illness but because of social oppression – lack of autonomy, domestic abuse, sexual repression, and limited roles for women.

David Charbonneau is a retired TRU electronics instructor who hosts a blog at http://www.eyeviewkamloops.wordpress.com.