Besides all the reasons other commenters have said, it’s because mental health is a pseudo-social phenomenon among teens.
Having a mental illness gets them attention, online and in person. I have two teens, and even though both have diagnosed mental illness due to trauma from their other parent, they still seek, discuss, and revel in self-diagnoses.
If a friend claims to have something, they rush to the internet to do “research,” and begin exhibiting “symptoms.” Same thing is true with other labels.
We have a dearth of parenting, due to needing two incomes to make a household run. Adult attention is scarce, so teens make up for it with wild claims and garnering attention from other teens. The internet makes it easy to model behaviors. So yes, there is an increase in mental illness, but not the kinds, nor for the reasons the internet would have us believe.
Because the U.S. has been letting its mental health issues fester under a veneer of American Exceptionalism for the better part of a century in order to squeeze every last drop of labor surplus out of its citizens.
The first few paragraphs of the blog post explained the problem pretty well - lack of access to professional mental health care.
The other parts of the article…especially bringing in techno optimism, feels unnecessary.
Do we see young people using tiktok to self diagonise other kinds of medical issues? At least not at the scale of mental health. And that is likely because they have much better access to professional help.
As society, we really really need to put more resources into mental health. It was an overlooked issue for centuries.
Mental health professionals are far and few between, are prohibitively expensive to see, and in many cases are working with an outdated education which leaves them unprepared to diagnose/treat certain conditions. That last point is really coming to light in the Autism/ADHD crowd, where if their therapist even knows/recognizes it (quite often people get misdiagnosed with anxiety, depression, bipolar, etc.) their outdated training may end up being harmful. With people who have these sharing not only their experiences, but also successful ways to handle and cope with their conditions, teens are able to get the help that is largely not available to them. That and the therapists that genuinely want to help as many people as possible are giving generalized advice on apps such as tiktok.
oddly enough, this tiktok explains many of these points and more better than I can
Yes, this! I live in a country where therapy is paid for by the state. But still, the various therapists I’ve talked to haven’t had any idea of ADHD or autism. One therapist told me “well, you think you have both, ADHD and autism? The odds of that would be tiny!” After I explained to him that it is actually very frequent and that both increase the chances of inheriting the other, he admitted that I apparently know more than him. He later told me that we cannot diagnose ADHD because he would have to cure my depression first (duh, what if I’m depressed because of AuDHD??) Another therapist told me that I couldn’t have ADHD because I could have a full conversation with her. Another therapist just laughed at my face in disbelief and another time told me “oh so now you also want to have autism?” One psychiatrist told me that he didn’t believe in the existence of adult ADHD. Another psychiatrist (a specialist for diagnosing ADHD!!) told me that I sure display symptoms of ADHD and autism but that I’m too complex of a case for him. A doctor told me that yes, the situation for diagnosis is dire, but that she can’t help me anyways. And with my current therapist I just avoid the topic altogether. I’ve been on waiting lists for ADHD and autism diagnosis since nearly two years. Doctors, therapists, psychiatrists in Germany are still back in time like 10-20 years with their knowledge of ADHD and autism. Meanwhile I listen to presentations and read papers by scientists about these topics (I’m a scientist myself). It is so infuriating!
So yes, I can totally believe how this massively adds to teens searching for answers elsewhere. Sure, in the US and many other countries just the inaccessibility because of high cost is a huge problem. But even if you have access to ‘professional’ treatment, you end up stuck. How can anyone trust in medical professionals when they are obviously telling you outdated bullshit?
not defending those doctors in any way as they should keep up to date in their medical training, but we didn't even really have a proper definition of autism until ~1994 when the dsm-4 was released and the name "Autism Spectrum Disorder" wasn't used until the DSM-5 came out in 2013. The DSM-5 it's self isn't even a great definition as experts say that it's definition excludes more older people and women than the DSM-4 did.
this means that therapists who have not kept up with their learning, and have been practicing for decades may not have been told ANYTHING about autism, and the ones who stopped their learning 11+ years ago may have been trained on incorrect/bad information.
Yes, this is the cause of the problems. Medical and psychological professionals often don’t get updated with the newest insights in medicine. Although some of the examples above are from professionals that are barely older than me (in their thirties).
Only read the abstract, but this paper seems to rather link the onset of autism to the gut microbiome. Very interesting though! Scanning the brain or your DNA would still work I guess. If a person has autism, they could theoretically show neurological differences. But maybe the variance of brains is just to large to ever be able to tell…
americans have decided human beings are not important. thats it, full stop.
we dont provide healthcare for our people. we provide healthcare for our wealthy people.
so the question of 'why doesnt america do something about its mental health issues' is kinda silly in that, we have decided collectively that humans do not matter. only profits.
when a mentally deficient person kills a room full of kindergartners and literally nothing happens, you have your answer.
Mhmm. I think especially America needs to step up their game when it comes to health care.
And lots of the other (western?) countries, too, regarding how they treat young people and in which way they want to covey moral values and provide them with a perspecive on life.
Maybe because it’s a totally unserved population. Even if you can afford mental health care, which many/most can’t, it’s very difficult to find a doc. There’s a shortage and an inability to pay.
The article explicitly talks about that multiple times, though. Were you reading one of the articles that this one references? It mentions repeatedly how inaccessible and unaffordable healthcare is, using both of those points, and then moves on to discuss the issue as part of a broader societal trend.
I mean, everybody’s fallible. No need to be a dick about it right?
Oftentimes if an article is two long for me to read while I’m desecrating the smallest room in the house, I’ll have GPT summarize it for me. I think that’s what I did in this case but honestly I don’t even remember. Like most people I am bathed in information and like most people a lot of it just rolls right off.