TikTok logo displayed on a phone screen and a laptop are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on August 10, 2022. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
There’s no telling what users will find on the TikTok platform The platform continues to impact society with videos focused on cooking, beauty, hacks, and more. However, with a rise of women diagnosing themselves with ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) after watching trending TikTok videos, doctors are speaking out.
According to Women’s Health, doctors explained that women are statistically more likely to have symptoms overlooked and go undiagnosed. Still, they warned licensed professionals should be giving the diagnosis rather than listening to people on TikTok.
If you scroll through TikTok’s #selfdiagnosis videos, there is a #ND neurodivergent community. Neurodivergent is defined as the way an individual’s brain operates in a way that’s different from what society would consider “normal” or “average” (a.k.a. “neurotypical” or NT). Reports state many forms of neurodivergence are typically diagnosed in infancy or childhood.
Typically girls, women, and gender-nonconforming people don’t always fit the standard diagnostic criteria of those with neurodivergent medical issues. Most times, their conditions are misunderstood to be personality defects or quirks.
There is no set definition of what “counts” as neurodivergence. Instead, it’s an umbrella term to refer to many neurological conditions linked to special ways of thinking, communicating, and being in the world to advocate for society to acknowledge and accommodate them. Some other disorders may include autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), Tourette’s syndrome (TS), and learning differences such as dyslexia.
Dr. Sasha Hamdani, a board-certified psychiatrist on TikTok as @ThePsychDoctorMD, told Women’s Health,
“It’s important to not get too entrenched in a diagnosis without speaking or corroborating with a mental health professional because it takes a trained brain to synthesize all of those data points in conjunction with your medical, psychological, and psychiatric presentations in order to arrive at the correct diagnosis.”
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