DANGERS OF SELF-DIAGNOSING MENTAL ILLNESS
Lately, mental health has been making its way to the forefront of health care and concern, thankfully. Too many people are mentally in shambles for so many reasons. With all this emotional and mental instability I’m glad our society is taking more time to research and find ways to provide stability in mental issues for those in need. Having said that, I want to discuss a scary epidemic developing rather rapidly.
There’s a mental issue I have noticed that I am going to refer to as self-diagnosis. Many people are under the impression they are qualified to diagnose themselves with whatever mental illness they think they have. If you are one of these people, read this carefully: you are not qualified. Outside of acknowledging there are issues preventing your stability whether emotionally, mentally, or both you are not qualified to diagnose yourself. This is why we have professionals. With insurance, there are options on how to get evaluated at little to no cost to you and there are licensed practitioners that will assist you in every step of the way in healing. Yes, you know yourself, you know something is off, you don’t feel right. Go to your doctor. Speak to a professional I can’t stress this enough.
Too many are self-diagnosing and refuse to go get the help they need, this is dangerous. Not only are you (more than likely) incorrectly labeling yourself with an illness, you are not making anything better following the treatment for an illness YOU decided fit your symptoms. On top of this, you are in a sense mocking those who truly suffer and have been clinically diagnosed with this illness you think you have. They know for sure they do. Your struggles are very different, yet many who do this self-diagnosis are in complete denial and are under the illusion that they have full control. Mental illness regardless of the severity is a serious matter and should be treated with a clinician’s expertise.
By truly believing you have the qualifications to diagnose yourself with a mental illness, you’re exhibiting behavior that is, in fact, a form of illness. Especially due to the fact on self-diagnosed, the “patient” follows whatever treatment they deem to be helpful to them as opposed to going to a licensed doctor who specializes in mental health and getting the appropriate help. Some people go as far as diagnosing others with mental illnesses and it’s very destructive. The most we can do is determine something is off and take the proper steps to contact a professional for further help. It’s okay to feel off and more than okay to reach out for help. We don’t have to solve our problems and issues alone, there’s but so much we can do on our own. Be mindful of how harmful that “I can heal and save myself” mentality can be when it comes to mental health.
I found an article from 2010 titled The Dangers of Self Diagnosis and to quote from the article: “Self-diagnosis is also a problem when you are in a state of denial about your symptoms. You may think that you have generalized body aches that started when your mood got worse, but a doctor may elect to do an EKG for chest pain that reveals possible coronary artery disease. You may have been trying to avoid the chest pain or you may have minimized this. Lastly, there are certain syndromes that may not seem like problems to you even though they are very disruptive to your life. For example, with delusional disorder, people do not think that they are delusional and because they are not overtly psychotic, they may not think to report paranoid symptoms that add up to delusional disorder. Also, many personality disorders are not spontaneously reported since they are usually problematic to other people.”
Keeping this in mind, it’s very easy to see how much we don’t know about our inner workings and how even we can miss or downplay a symptom that may reveal something more serious. Sometimes it’s really all in our head. The best bet is always to go to a trusted professional. Take someone with you, go for a second opinion. Exhaust all options, just do more than just googling symptoms and repeating what you found on WebMD, this could make all the difference in what restore stability in your life.
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