This is actually from October 2022 but it was featured on the homepage of the Times today.
Some excerpts from this article:
- While social media can help people feel less alone, using it to evaluate symptoms has several downsides.
- In some cases, this information can lead them toward getting the help they need, but it can also result in people incorrectly labeling themselves, avoiding a professional assessment and embracing ineffective or inappropriate treatments.
- Some will say, “I’m so O.C.D.,” she added. But “if you’re organized and you have structure and you like things a certain way and you’re functioning, you don’t have obsessive-compulsive disorder — you’re organized,” Ms. Barsch said. “People who have O.C.D. cannot function because of their compulsions.”
- Kids are searching for a community, and are using their current struggle with mental health symptoms as a way to find like-minded people, sometimes wearing their symptoms as a badge of pride or a shorthand way to explain themselves to others, Dr. Prinstein said.
- “A great concern is that adolescents may be making faulty self-diagnoses and treatment plans in the absence of professional insight,” said Corey H. Basch, a professor of public health at William Paterson University of New Jersey and the lead author of the study. And teenagers may also come across inaccurate information or accounts that encourage harmful behavior, like cutting, or trigger those who are struggling, she added.
- On the flip side, she added, finding a positive, supportive community online can be powerful, especially for those who are marginalized or who lack access to mental health resources.
- Often the information presented on social media can be inaccurate or overly simplistic, so Dr. Dube also recommended pointing kids toward reliable sources like the A.P.A.’s directory of mental health topics, which is also available in Spanish, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’s resources page for families and youths.
