Navigating the Social Media Self-Diagnosis Trend
Curt and Katie chat about the TikTok Mental Health and the self-diagnosis trend. We dig into what diagnosis is (and what is actually useful about diagnosis). We also explore the concerns with social media self-diagnosis as well as how we can support our clients with getting accurate assessment and treatment.
Click here to scroll to the podcast transcript.Transcript
In this podcast episode we talk about self-diagnosis and the impact of social media
We have both heard about TikTok diagnoses in our practices and wanted to talk about how therapists might navigate this new trend.
What is the TikTok trend of self-diagnosis?
- Lots of influencers on social media are sharing content
- Unvetted content creators
- Some good information mixed in with very vague information that can be confusing
What is diagnosis?
“The way I see diagnosis is that it’s a construct… It’s labeling folks that seem to fall together with similar symptoms. And the medical model says, that’s a real thing. And then we can do treatments or prescribe medication for it… And so, to me, some of the self-diagnosis stuff is almost colluding with this medical model that’s saying, if you have a couple of these things over here, and a couple of those things over here, then you have this label, this label is a real thing. And that blows my mind, because I think a lot of folks in the self-diagnosis realm are trying to kind of push up against the establishment, but they’re lending credence to this idea that diagnosis is a real, concrete thing versus a tool to help with treatment planning, and to understanding us better.” – Katie Vernoy, LMFT
- Rosenhan experiment (experiment showing that malingering patients will probably be misdiagnosed)
- Constructs of things that typically fall together
- Effective for treatment planning and getting this treatment covered by insurance
- Identity versus something to heal
What are concerns with social media self-diagnosis?
“The point of having a professional be able to properly evaluate is looking through that more nuanced clinical eye in order to look at where the threshold is that actually meets diagnostic [criteria] versus actually just having some characteristics in common with [the diagnosis]. Somebody can be nervous, does not mean that they have anxiety… What is pathologizing normal feelings?” – Curt Widhalm, LMFT
- Focusing in on small elements and then having that frame their full life experience
- Seeking only confirmatory diagnosis versus allowing for differential diagnosis
- Clinicians who are not doing full assessments to support clients who have self-diagnosed
- Clients who do not need treatment taking slots from those who do need assessment and treatment
- Lack of nuance in the social media content that doesn’t include information on differential diagnosis
- Inaccurate treatments based on inaccurate self-diagnosis
- Malingering and factitious disorder risk
- Pathologizing normal feelings
- Being inundated with so much information
- Confirmatory bias
How to support clients who have sought diagnostic information on social media and google?
“What started the whole thing… clinicians under diagnosing, undervaluing client feedback, not asking all the right questions. And so, folks are feeling dissatisfied with what we’re doing and heading to the interweb to understand better what it is that’s going on.” – Katie Vernoy, LMFT
- Therapists need to listen to their clients, so they don’t feel the need to go elsewhere for information
- Identify what is resonating for clients and explore what it means to them
- Educate clients about differential diagnosis
- Walk through their research (to listen and to help vet sources)
- Take your client seriously and support them in getting the help they need
Our Generous Sponsor for this episode of the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide:
Thrizer
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Resources for Modern Therapists mentioned in this Podcast Episode:
We’ve pulled together resources mentioned in this episode and put together some handy-dandy links. Please note that some of the links below may be affiliate links, so if you purchase after clicking below, we may get a little bit of cash in our pockets. We thank you in advance!
Articles:
TikTok Mental Illness Diagnosis
Deconstructing TikTok Videos on Mental Health: Cross-sectional, Descriptive Content Analysis
TikTok and the Dangers of Self-Diagnosing Mental Health Disorders
Why “TikTok Diagnoses” Are on the Rise
Why the nature of TikTok could exacerbate a worrisome social media trend
Young Women Are Self-Diagnosing Personality Disorders, Thanks To TikTok
Relevant Episodes of MTSG Podcast:
What’s New in the DSM-5-TR: An interview with Dr. Michael B. First
Portrayals of Mental Health and Therapy in the Media: An interview with Danah Davis Williams, LMFT
Should Therapists Correct Their Clients?
It’s Not a Chemical Imbalance: An interview with Dr. Kristen Syme
Is Therapy an Opiate of the Masses?
Speaking Up for Mental Health Awareness: An interview with Metta World Peace
Who we are:
Curt Widhalm, LMFT
Curt Widhalm is in private practice in the Los Angeles area. He is the cofounder of the Therapy Reimagined conference, an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University and CSUN, a former Subject Matter Expert for the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, former CFO of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and a loving husband and father. He is 1/2 great person, 1/2 provocateur, and 1/2 geek, in that order. He dabbles in the dark art of making “dad jokes” and usually has a half-empty cup of coffee somewhere nearby. Learn more at: http://www.curtwidhalm.com
Katie Vernoy, LMFT
Katie Vernoy is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, coach, and consultant supporting leaders, visionaries, executives, and helping professionals to create sustainable careers. Katie, with Curt, has developed workshops and a conference, Therapy Reimagined, to support therapists navigating through the modern challenges of this profession. Katie is also a former President of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. In her spare time, Katie is secretly siphoning off Curt’s youthful energy, so that she can take over the world. Learn more at: http://www.katievernoy.com
A Quick Note:
Our opinions are our own. We are only speaking for ourselves – except when we speak for each other, or over each other. We’re working on it.
Our guests are also only speaking for themselves and have their own opinions. We aren’t trying to take their voice, and no one speaks for us either. Mostly because they don’t want to, but hey.
Stay in Touch with Curt, Katie, and the whole Therapy Reimagined #TherapyMovement:
Consultation services with Curt Widhalm or Katie Vernoy:
Connect with the Modern Therapist Community:
Our Facebook Group – The Modern Therapists Group
Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide Creative Credits:
Voice Over by DW McCann https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/
Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano https://groomsymusic.com/
Transcript for this episode of the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide podcast (Autogenerated):
Curt Widhalm 0:00
This episode of the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide is brought to you by Thrizer.
Katie Vernoy 0:03
Thrizer is a modern billing platform for private pay therapists. Their platform automatically gets clients reimbursed by their insurance after every session. Just by billing your clients through Thrizer you can potentially save them hundreds every month with no extra work on your end. The best part is you don’t have to give up your rates they charge a standard 3% processing fee.
Curt Widhalm 0:23
Listen at the end of the episode for more information on a special offer from Thrizer.
Announcer 0:29
You’re listening to the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide where therapists live, breathe, and practice as human beings. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, here are your hosts, Curt Widhalm, and Katie Vernoy.
Curt Widhalm 0:44
Welcome back modern therapists, this is the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide. I’m Curt Widhalm, with Katie Vernoy. And this is the podcast for therapists where we talk about the things that are going on in the world, the things that happen in our practices, things that relate to therapists and the clients that we see. And we are diving into day on self diagnostics, and whether they’re real or not, and kind of the influence of things. And is this helpful or harmful to our profession? And we anticipate that exactly 0% of people will agree with the entirety of this episode, including us. So Katie, where do you want to dive in on this?
Katie Vernoy 1:29
Well, I think we should start with what’s happening. I have had a lot of folks come into my practice, clients of folks who are already in mental health treatment, who say on TikTok, I am looking and I think I have ADHD, or I think I have X.
Curt Widhalm 1:47
Ah, yes, the bastion of deep research and showing nuance fully, TikTok.
Katie Vernoy 1:53
TikTok, yes. And what I’ve done in those situations is try to identify with them what content resonated and explored with it. And actually, some of the folks who’ve come up with this, I’ve, I’ve sent them on to more intensive testing, because my differential was ADHD or trauma, I went the trauma route. And for one, yeah, it was trauma for the other one, it was like, maybe ADHD, but yeah, trauma. So I think it’s something where I’m seeing a lot of folks taking to the interwebs and getting a lot of content served up to them, the algorithms are serving them the same content or related content over and over again, and it’s becoming fodder for political exploration. But I think I’m also seeing it with friends, colleagues, family members, who are looking at these things going, Is this me? And there’s some folks that are like, oh, there’s this one thing. So that must mean it’s true. And then on the other end, there’s folks who say, Oh, that’s interesting. And then do, you know, binders full of research, and then actually go for formal diagnosis and everything in between. And so it’s an interesting phenomena. I worry about some of the folks that are self identifying with one or two things that resonate. And so I want to dig into kind of how to how to safely engage with all of this, but also what it means for therapists and what therapists can do. Because it feels like, you know, it used to be Dr. Google and you know, WebMD, and all that stuff. And that’s still happening. But now it’s even tinier little pits of content. And it’s, it’s unvetted content creators, so.
Curt Widhalm 3:31
Well, it’s it’s the TikTok medical school and the PhD program of Google and WebMD. And, you know…
Katie Vernoy 3:42
All the things.
Curt Widhalm 3:43
Instead of differential diagnostics, it’s differential hashtags.
Katie Vernoy 3:47
Yes, you have to figure out which hashtags you want to follow to, depending on how you’re feeling that day.
Curt Widhalm 3:53
I think that we have to start this with the point of what is a diagnosis?
Katie Vernoy 3:58
Yes, yes. What do you think a diagnosis is?
Curt Widhalm 4:03
Well, this is not something that’s particularly new. And maybe kind of one of the first things of my remembrance back from my undergrad studies is about the Rosenhan experiment where people faked having hallucinations and tried to get admitted to psychiatric hospitals. And by and large worked, and were given anti psychotic medications, and…
Katie Vernoy 4:33
Wow.
Curt Widhalm 4:33
…it we’ll include some background link to this. But this was done back in the early 70s by a Stanford professor named David Rosenhan, and was largely kind of done to look at how resolute are psychiatric diagnostics at first. And it created a big stir in the field as far as like our clinicians actually good at identifying when people are faking mental illnesses in the first place.
Katie Vernoy 5:00
So that’s malingering. That’s just putting together a whole bunch a whole bunch of symptoms.
Curt Widhalm 5:00
That was that was science. That was science.
Katie Vernoy 5:03
It was science.
Curt Widhalm 5:07
There was an IRB that made it science.
Katie Vernoy 5:06
I get that. I get it was science. What I’m saying that is malingering. That is someone faking symptoms to claim a diagnosis and get that diagnosis.
Curt Widhalm 5:11
If it’s not sanctioned by science, then yes, you are correct.
Katie Vernoy 5:23
All right. All right.
Curt Widhalm 5:23
We call people who are exaggerating symptoms and need clinical treatment for them.
Katie Vernoy 5:30
Okay, so that’s, that’s an element of it. So the assessors may not know if we’re faking it. But I want to go even further back to what is diagnosis? I mean, diagnosing has shifted like criteria has been rewritten, even as recently as earlier this year. The way I see diagnosis is that it’s a construct. It’s putting together something where it’s labeling folks that seem to fall together with similar symptoms. And the medical model says, that’s a real thing. And then we can do treatments or prescribe medication for it, or I guess I can’t prescribe medication for it, someone could prescribe medication for it. And so to me, some of the self diagnosis stuff is almost colluding with this medical model that’s saying, if you have a couple of these things over here, and a couple of those things over here, then you have this label, this label is a real thing. And that, that blows my mind, because I think a lot of folks in the self diagnosis realm are trying to kind of push up against the establishment, but they’re lending credence to this idea that diagnosis is a real, concrete thing versus a tool to help with treatment planning, and to understanding us better.
Curt Widhalm 6:49
Yeah, everything that you just said.
Katie Vernoy 6:53
Well, I mean, it’s hard, because then folks really tie their identity to some of these things. And, you know, that’s a whole other conversation about what is identity and what is something to heal. But I think there’s this element of being able to get our minds around what it is we’re trying to do here, as clinicians, but also as a society, when folks are going to TikTok and determining that they’re autistic or determining that they’re ADHD or that they’re bipolar or that they have Tourette’s or whatever it is like, to me, it seems like there’s these fad diagnoses. And some folks are malingering like your experiment, which I guess wasn’t malingering because it was in the name of science. But some folks are getting more like a factitious disorder where they’re taking it in and believing it’s true. And their their symptoms that are coming up that are just part of an anxiety response to what they’re engaging in. At least that’s how I understand it. How do you understand it?
Curt Widhalm 7:49
Adding to what you’re talking about, as far as diagnostics here is the reason for categorizing these kinds of symptoms or presentations is to have a treatment, and largely it ties back to the funding for treatment in order to improve those conditions.
Katie Vernoy 8:05
Yes.
Curt Widhalm 8:06
And part of what you’re describing here is when people make these conditions as a piece of their identity, and consider it to be a destination rather than a description of where they are at at the time.
Katie Vernoy 8:23
Yes.
Curt Widhalm 8:23
And there are some conditions in our DSM that acknowledged as a field are things that are temporary and treatable. And there are some things in there that are considered to be more permanent and more fixed. And I don’t think that we’re going to have a universal, here’s where everything lies on this. This is where nuance is really going to be an important piece of this discussion, because I have met people who have met several other clinicians before who have missed diagnostics that show up as presentations and have started out from people doing, as you described earlier binders and binders or in any of the last 20 years pages and pages of web research, rather than printing things out. But have done a lot of good deep research. I’ve also seen a number of clients who show up in my practice, who believes that they have something because of TikTok medical school and do not have the origins, do not have the descriptions of this but have started to formulate their identity around what is trendy online.
Katie Vernoy 8:23
Yeah.
Curt Widhalm 9:24
And it’s incredibly important to parse out that both of these can exist and that self diagnostics are not a universal pathway of what is happening in our offices as either being entirely good or entirely bad. But it takes the patients to be able to go through a good diagnostic evaluation process in order to parse out what is an actual diagnosis that is actually recognized and actually has treatments for it versus something that is sought out as an identity.
Katie Vernoy 10:14
Well and even if it’s not sought out of as an identity, in some of the articles I was reading, preparing for this episode, there are folks who are framing their whole experience within the diagnosis they got on TikTok. And so like your malingering experiment, they are framing everything with that language, with those symptoms. And so it can be it can collude with the TikTok stuff that they had, where they’re, they’re presenting with almost a fully formed diagnosis and providing the information for the clinician to cosign on it. And I worry about it. I think when we’re able to do really good testing, or when we’re able to really sort out what it is they’re resonating with and help to identify some of the more tricky differentials that folks may not be aware of, because they’re not clinicians, they’ve not been trained, I think it’s good. I think that there are psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists who are missing stuff. And there certainly is an under diagnosis of a lot of things, especially in women. However, many clinicians can help folks sort this out, if someone comes to their therapist to a new practitioner with an open mind versus this is what I have, please confirm this.
Curt Widhalm 11:39
And then the other end of that is clinicians that are so willing to accept everything that clients present as fact that they become enabling.
Katie Vernoy 11:48
Sure.
Curt Widhalm 11:49
And it encourages therapist shopping in order to finally achieve the diagnosis that affirms one’s identity, in this case, or are seeking out that stamp of approval from somebody in a professional standpoint, that you know, how many clients just show up to an office and are like, Yeah I have this diagnosis that isn’t really followed up on Well where did you get the diagnosis? How did you come to this conclusion? That I think ends up happening that ends up reinforcing this in, particularly, agencies or funding programs, these kinds of presenting clients end up taking up funding from clients who actually meet these diagnostics. They take up the appointment slots.
Katie Vernoy 12:38
Yeah.
Curt Widhalm 12:39
And that is problematic to our field. It can set unrealistic expectations as far as what treatment is for people. It can set unrealistic expectations as far as what the diagnostic criteria actually are. And I see this as something where all of us recognize that there are certain features of certain diagnostics that do not appear in the DSM checklists. However, when we have even clinicians going out into social media and creating little 30 second videos of here’s three common things that just about everybody has that are symptoms of ADHD that helps the general public, who doesn’t have the same background information of us be like, Oh, what are the three things that you listed as having nostrils? I have nostrils, that must mean I have ADHD?
Katie Vernoy 13:28
Well, I think I want to get a little less, you know, kind of silly about it. I’m actually worried about all the TikTok ADHD diagnoses, because a lot of them are talking about distractibility, impulsivity, talking about, you know, a lot of the mood dysregulation that can come along with ADHD, but our whole society went through a trauma. And those are also symptoms of trauma. They are also symptoms of unrest, lack of stability, all of these things where folks are like, Oh, my gosh, I must have ADHD, because I can’t remember things or I’m having a really hard time. It’s like, that’s also grief. I mean, there’s so much overlap. There’s so much so much of a differential diagnosis that’s required if we really have to get down to diagnosis versus trying to do some of the healing work we can do in therapy to see what actually sticks after we get some more coping strategies. After we help you with the situation that you’re in. Somebody was like, I was deeply, deeply depressed, and I thought I had OCD. And in fact, once I got back to school in person, all of my symptoms went away. I mean, it’s it’s something where there’s, there’s so much situational things that are happening right now. And so many of these symptoms go across so many diagnoses, that it’s hard to sort through it. And when folks are paying attention to these diagnoses from the TikTok content creators, I think the problem is they can go to the wrong treatments. They can start doing huge amounts of exercise and you know, moving around a lot and doing a whole bunch of stuff and figure out that they have anxiety and they’re actually spiking the adrenaline all the time. Or they can try to really relax and calm down and figure out later that they had agitated depression. And they’re just making it worse. I mean, it’s, it’s something where there’s these things that we actually need folks with expertise to try to help when the situation is truly dire versus going to TikTok or Google or other social media platforms and saying, Okay, well, I’m doing something for my health, because I’m following what the TikTok person says.
Curt Widhalm 15:34
And that’s further exacerbated by the people who don’t actually have any of these symptoms at all. They see things that are trending, and then they start to adopt some of these characteristics in order to get a bigger following, to fit in with an online crowd, to get more likes, more views, more comments. And to the point of having a professional be able to properly evaluate is looking through that more nuanced clinical eye in order to look at where the threshold is that actually meets diagnostic versus actually, just having some characteristics in common with it.
Katie Vernoy 16:19
Sure.
Curt Widhalm 16:20
Somebody can be nervous. Does not mean that they have anxiety.
Katie Vernoy 16:23
Yeah. Well, and everybody is anxious sometimes and so there’s also this kind of what is clinical and what’s subclinical?
Curt Widhalm 16:30
Well, and beyond that, what’s pathologizing normal feelings?
Katie Vernoy 16:35
Yeah, yeah.
Curt Widhalm 16:37
And where I see this, in particular is things like Tourette syndrome, where people who are clinicians who are familiar with what Tourette syndrome is, can look at some of these content creators and recognize that what is being done is being faked. It is something that diminishes the diagnosis for those who actually have it.
Katie Vernoy 17:01
Yeah.
Curt Widhalm 17:02
And what that does for the individuals, it makes them look like a fool to the clinician, but what it does is it potentially creates something to emulate for other people who don’t have that diagnosis. And we’re not, you know, jumping out and diagnosing people on TikTok with things.
Katie Vernoy 17:20
No.
Curt Widhalm 17:21
But when we have the followers of the followers starting to show up into our office. When we have more and more people who are actually even legitimately being called out online of you’re faking this disorder, it diminishes the credibility of those who actually do. And it makes it something where it raises the question of Is this somebody who’s actually legitimately in need of treatment? It makes you know, us as a profession potentially at risk for having the bias of minimizing people who are actually coming in with legitimate complaints.
Katie Vernoy 17:59
Well, and I think that’s, that’s kind of a cyclical thing that I think started the whole thing. Which is, clinicians under diagnosing, undervaluing client feedback, not asking all the right questions. And so folks are feeling dissatisfied with what we’re doing and heading to the interweb to understand better what it is that’s going on. I know I do that for medical stuff, when I have a doctor that doesn’t listen to me, I have one right now. And he’s pissing me off. And so I’m going in, and I’m talking to my other doctors, and I’m going to Dr. Google to figure out what might be wrong. And so to me, I can understand the impulse. And there’s so much information out there. And some of it is legitimately really good information that has spurred great conversations with my clients, has helped me to identify some things that I can explore with my own therapist. There is really good content. It’s just there’s not a clear way to vet the content. And when folks come to our offices, there’s some of us that have no idea, not on TikTok at all, and we’re just trying to figure out what’s being presented. But there’s some folks that think they know better than us. They don’t take in client experience. And so there’s, again, speaking to nuance clinicians need to do better at listening to their clients and believing their clients experience. But I think there’s also that element of clients need to somehow be more critical thinkers about what it is that they’re taking in. But I just went back on TikTok for a minute to prepare for this episode. And…
Curt Widhalm 19:31
Just for everybody at home who can’t see Katie, she just put her face into her hands…
Katie Vernoy 19:36
Yeah.
Curt Widhalm 19:36
…as she was saying she went back on TikTok.
Katie Vernoy 19:37
And it was just this wash of information. And I specifically went to mental health TikTok, and I was just thing after thing after thing after thing and it was so overwhelming. And it was you know, there was some people that I could tell were therapists, some people were clearly quote unquote, mental health influencers that are sitting there and crying all the time. I was like how does anybody sit through through this? This is way, way too overwhelming. And so I think to me, if we as clinicians are not aware of it, it’s a problem. If we’re not able to actually meet our clients where they are, it’s also a problem because there’s another place to go to get information that might resonate more with them than what we’re telling them. Especially if we haven’t listened to their whole story.
Curt Widhalm 20:22
I’ve had people show up in my office, and I’ll change details here so that way…
Katie Vernoy 20:22
Sure.
Curt Widhalm 20:24
But I’ve had people show up in my office with, and these are particularly teenagers, with the idea that they have diagnosis X.
Katie Vernoy 20:42
Yes.
Curt Widhalm 20:42
And, you know, all evidence is pointing to that millennials, especially younger millennials went to YouTube for a lot of being able to get more information about stuff. But more and more of the older Gen Z’s are going to places like TikTok and Instagram for their information.
Katie Vernoy 21:06
Yeah.
Curt Widhalm 21:06
And the more often that we go to shorter form content in order to get whether it’s colloquial or professional information, the more that gets skipped over. And the more that things have to be presented for views because when you are searching, hashtag mental health influencers, or whatever it is that you were doing on TikTok.
Katie Vernoy 21:12
It was actually hashtag mental health TikTok.
Curt Widhalm 21:32
I stand corrected. But whenever you go to those kinds of environments, it loses out on a lot of specifics that makes something either a clinically treatable thing, an actual diagnosis, something that’s diagnoseable for reimbursement. And, you know, just flat out taking clients words of I saw this thing should be a starting point of the evaluative process, not the factual point of where things go. And this is, as you’re speaking to working collaboratively with your clients, not enabling, not, you know, denying them because I have had those clients who come in with, I have thing X, as you’ve pointed out earlier in the episode because of XY and Z. Okay, when did it start? Oh, last year. Okay, that’s not necessarily this thing that gets diagnosed in childhood and has years and years of symptoms present. And I’ve been met with Well, that’s because I’ve been masking all of these years.
Katie Vernoy 22:39
Yeah.
Curt Widhalm 22:40
Well, what’s get into developmental history, let’s get parents in, let’s get academic reports in where some of these things would have shown up that aren’t, as you pointed out earlier, things that are environmentally situated, not necessarily things that are diagnostics that we would expect across a lifetime.
Katie Vernoy 22:59
Well, and I think what ends up happening, at least the way I understand it, from what I’ve read, my experience on TikTok, as well as the conversations I’ve had with clients, is the algorithms are such that the content that you land on longest you get served more of that stuff, and your for you page kind of reflects what you’ve been most interested in. But what I was seeing is that when you get further and further into a more specific hashtag, or a specific kind of area, whether it’s autism, ADHD, depression, anxiety, bipolar, whatever it is, you get more and more content that served up to you. And what I even find myself doing, which I think it’s human nature. But even though I know what diagnoses look like, I’ve diagnosed other people, I am well aware, but you go into this confirmatory bias, because it’s like, oh, I have that I have three of five there, okay, I have four or five here, I’ve got two have seven here. But look at all of these things that I have that fit into this diagnosis, I must have it. And so it keeps serving it up and serving it up and you’re constantly getting reinforced that you have these things because some of them are truly like the horoscope things like yeah, you might feel overwhelmed a lot or if you feel really sensitive, but it’s something where over time, it can feel like there’s nothing else this could be. And so you know whether it’s the masking and determining, like have I masked for my whole life, or some of these other pieces. Not only is it hard for for folks to then sort it out. You know, to actually get to a true diagnosis and a true diagnostic process. But it’s truly very painful. I mean to consider, I’ve masked my whole life. I have this thing. It has been painful for me to not display all of these other things. I’m exhausted. And so it becomes like, who am I, it’s his whole identity crisis, it can be all these things, and it’s very, very painful to go through. And the challenge is, if you don’t then go forward with an actual clinical collaborative process, you’re stuck in this swirl of all this content that is reinforcing, you have this thing, and that you’ve masked and that you’re in pain and that society is bad. So I think it’s something where it would be interesting to find out and I don’t know that there’s any way to do it, like how many folks from self diagnosis through TikTok or some other social media internet space come in, and their their diagnosis is confirmed versus denied? And by a credible, affirming clinician, not a clinician, that is either, as you were saying it, you know, kind of colluding with the pathology, and/or a clinician that just discounts whatever clients say, and have their own, you know, kind of pet diagnosis that they give everybody. Cause I don’t know what that percentage would be, honestly, because I think there’s some use here, I just don’t know how much is useful and how much it’s dangerous.
Curt Widhalm 25:04
For those clients who do end up in our office, one of the strategies that I’ve found to be most effective is asking clients to show me their research. That being able to help validate that they have concerns and being able to help walk them through what is good research to look at. And what is just kind of content for fodder, allows for us to be able to have a more professional level conversation where clients feel they are taken seriously, even if we end up in different conclusions at the end of a session or several sessions that helps to address what it is that they’re presenting with. I’m wary to encourage more content, even by professionals out there because we’re biased too.
Katie Vernoy 26:18
Yeah.
Curt Widhalm 26:18
I look at you know, going back to our psychopathology classes in grad school, how everybody thought that every single diagnostic fit them at some point in their life as they were first just learning about it. And that was in our formal education towards being able to identify and test people for these things as professionals. We as humans have an innate desire to fit within patterns that are being described. As professionals, it’s our job to recognize where that’s just kind of the personality of trying to fit into a description of self. But it is our limits of being able to have to hold some sort of professional line of what’s actually diagnoseable or not.
Katie Vernoy 28:01
Well, I think the biggest piece and and this is something that I just it’s kind of more of a balanced piece, for me anyway, because I’ve been pretty adamant about the harm. I think it’s something where as a profession, the more we can listen to our clients and understand them, the less that they will feel like they’re being invalidated. And that they need to find, whether it’s clinician shopping, or whatever, that they can find the treatment or the support, or the self understanding and awareness that they need to feel healthier, happier, stronger, more connected to the people around them. I think it’s something where this is, in some ways a good problem to have, because it is a lot more awareness. There are a lot more folks who are understanding mental health to at least some extent. I think the challenge is when it becomes so simplified to fit into these tiny little videos. And when it’s being produced for likes, it gets modified to the point where not everything is helpful, and some things are actually harmful. But I’ve seen some really, really great videos that have been extremely empowering and helpful and informative. It’s just really hard to sort through them. And so I think for folks to be very careful, to be very thoughtful, and to check their own response to what they’re experiencing and find someone they can trust to really talk through. Do you see this in me? I mean, I’ve for my own self diagnosis process. I’ve I’ve talked to you. I’ve talked to my friends, I’ve talked to other people like, have you seen this and me, what do you think about that? And it helps to get to a place of understanding, oh, maybe there’s some of these things that are here. Maybe some of those things, those coping skills or the empowerment statements are helpful for me, but the diagnosis may not be. It may just let’s take the good stuff of empowerment, lack of bias and stigma and all the other pieces and create a more healthy society without having to worry about all these labels.
Curt Widhalm 30:11
I’m sure that you’re looking for places to share your thoughts and that can be done on our social media. You can contact us, you can find our references over at mtsgpodcast.com. We’ll also include our show notes and transcription over there. If you want to support us, please consider becoming a patron or supporting us on Buy Me a Coffee. And until next time, I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy.
Katie Vernoy 30:36
Thanks again to our sponsor, Thrizer.
Curt Widhalm 30:39
Thrizer is a new billing platform for therapists that was built on the belief that therapy should be accessible and clinicians should earn what they are worth. Every time you bill a client through Thrizer an insurance claim is automatically generated and sent directly to the clients insurance. From there, Thrizer provides concierge support to ensure clients get their reimbursement quickly and directly into their bank account. By eliminating reimbursement by cheque, confusion around benefits and obscurity with reimbursement status they allow your clients to focus on what actually matters rather than worrying about their money. It is very quick and easy to get set up and it works great with EHR systems.
Katie Vernoy 31:19
Their team is super helpful and responsive and the founder is actually a longtime therapy client who grew frustrated with his reimbursement times. Thrizer lets you become more accessible while remaining in complete control of your practice. Better experience for your clients during therapy means higher retention. Money won’t be the reason they quit on therapy. Sign up using bit.ly/moderntherapists and use the code ‘moderntherapists’ if you want to test Thrizer completely risk free. You will get one month of no payment processing fees meaning you earn 100% of your cash rate during that time.
Curt Widhalm 31:53
Once again, sign up at bit.ly/moderntherapists and use the code ‘moderntherapists’ if you want to test Thrizer completely risk free.
Announcer 32:03
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