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true_religion a day ago

What other kinds of neurodivergence is it masking?

You did give examples, but only for ways it perhaps fails in promoting empathy for groups with similar problems.

Aurornis a day ago | parent | next [-]

I don't think masking is necessarily the right word, but when people start self-diagnosing themselves they often miss the correct problem in favor of what's popular on their social media feeds.

Right now, Autism and/or ADHD are the two that are most prevalent on social media. Many people, especially younger people who spend a lot of time on Reddit, TikTok, or other sites, see these diagnoses trend with vague descriptions about what they entail. When they encounter struggles, they recall those vague descriptions, make a connection, and assume their life problems are due to the diagnosis.

It's not uncommon to read accounts of people who describe their symptoms as textbook social anxiety or depression who will nevertheless insist they have "AuDHD" as self-diagnosed via their social media consumption.

It can actually be hard to break them out of one preferred diagnosis and get them going down the right path to address the problem.

An example: Someone develops an eating disorder, but they read on Reddit that forgetting to eat and having low energy for schoolwork can be a symptoms of ADHD. They self-diagnose as ADHD and avoid addressing their very obvious eating disorder problem. They might even get insulted when someone suggests they have an eating disorder, insisting that the other person must not understand ADHD.

This pattern isn't unique to autism or ADHD. It's common to all trending internet diagnoses. You will find communities where everyone convinces themselves they have Ehlers-Danlos syndrome or Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. Doctors who treat those two conditions are currently rejecting referrals at a high rate due to extreme self-diagnosis via TikTok. The people self-diagnosing with those conditions usually do have something wrong, but they've latched on to one explanation that doesn't fit and they won't let go because they think it explains everything about them.

exmadscientist a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I, personally, just really really hate how many people use "neurodiverse" as a synonym for "autistic". I am not neurotypical but am very much not autistic, and I'm far from the only one.

aleph_minus_one 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Indeed using the term "neurodiverse" only makes sense if you also want to include, for example, psychopaths (another form of neurodiversity) in the group that you want to describe.

true_religion 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I don’t see any reason not to include psychopathy. It’s not a synonym for evil: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscien...