Illnesses

By Audrey Kohnen

According to the CDC, children are more likely to be diagnosed with a mental health disorder than adults. Many mental illnesses have similar symptoms, which is why a specific disorder can be so hard to pinpoint and cause individuals to struggle with diagnostic processes. A study done by the University of Michigan found that about 7.7 million children in the U.S. have at least one mental diagnosis. But almost one million children are misdiagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) alone, which is mainly due to their young age. ADHD symptoms overlap with a variety of other conditions, including Bipolar disorder, General Anxiety disorder and Depression, which is why 20% of children are likely misdiagnosed. While doctors are usually correct in their diagnosis of ADHD, awareness about high rates of misdiagnoses is starting to spread, allowing people to be more cautious when accepting a professional diagnosis.

Senior Katherine Koplik is the president of Sources of Strength, a club dedicated to spreading awareness, creating a community, helping those struggling with mental illness and promoting youth suicide prevention to create healthy norms in youth culture. She shared her personal experiences with misdiagnosis.

“Misdiagnoses happen all the time. I had all the symptoms of Manic Depression or Bipolar Disorder, but that’s not what I have,” Koplik said. “And the reality is that the way that those two things impact your life and the way that they get treated is completely different. So that’s why you have to be careful with self-diagnosing, and that’s why you have to be careful with just a quick diagnosis from a doctor. Sometimes it takes a lot of trial and error.”

Self-diagnosis is the process of diagnosing oneself with a medical condition without the opinion of a medical professional. In a study done by Michigan State University, researchers started seeing the harmful long-term effects of the psychoactive drugs being used to treat those with misdiagnosed ADHD. If levels of dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin are normal in the brain, using ADHD medication would lower levels of these natural neurotransmitters. Since the body starts to rely on the drugs to raise one’s neurotransmitter levels, if the patient stops using the drug at any time, their levels greatly decline. This eventually puts the patient at risk for various health problems. The study concluded that further research is still needed to learn more about the various ways that ADHD is misdiagnosed and the range of its future effects.

Junior Anna Pearson said overdiagnosis can stem from ignoring the nuances of issues children may be experiencing.

“I think there is a problem of overdiagnosing children. I think there’s also some misdiagnosis of disorders like ADHD, as in it’s not actually ADHD … It’s easier to diagnose that than go deeper into the problem,” Pearson said. “I think we’re almost handing out Depression and Anxiety diagnoses because we don’t want to go deeper and see what the real problem is. Like schools overworking students, they’d rather just diagnose students with anxiety and depression than get to the real root of the problem.”

According to Pearson, the lack of consistency across states could be a contributing factor in overdiagnosing children. Many schools do not screen students for mental health issues, and the regulation of schools performing tests/screenings varies widely across states. Even if students are correctly identified, districts may lack the mental health treatment options that would be needed to help them.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIH) found that only 38% of youth with mood disorders such as Depression and Bipolar Disorder receive treatment services. Koplik discussed her long mental health and diagnostic journey, as she doesn’t have standard Anxiety and

Depression.

“For the longest time they thought [it was] Major Depressive disorder, then it was maybe Bipolar, and then it actually turns out that I have what’s called PMDD, which is Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder. So based on where I am in my menstrual cycle, it’s extreme PMS, if you think of it that way,” Koplik said. “A lot of women struggle with it. Your progesterone dips quickly and your brain kind of struggles to recover [and] produces too many chemicals. It causes a lot of women to feel very suicidal and out of control, almost like manic or severe Depression during that time, which is why I was labeled with Bipolar Disorder, but that’s not what I struggle with.”

In a 2021 CDC study, nearly half of Americans reported having recent symptoms of an anxiety or depressive disorder. Many say the rates of anxiety and depression have increased since the beginning of the pandemic. People may use online resources to research symptoms or other medical signs that may point to a certain diagnosis. This leads them to want to identify under a certain diagnosis without a medical opinion or tests. Research prior to the pandemic indicated over a third of adults in the U.S. routinely used the internet to help diagnose their illness, and since the pandemic, that statistic has risen. However, results from online searches can lead to confusing or inaccurate information. Koplik began participating in Sources of Strength her freshman year and values speaking to others about mental health and removing stigma.

“I find it very frustrating, especially on forms like TikTok where people will fight to claim these diagnoses or they’re self-diagnosed,” Koplik said. “It’s kind of unfortunate because the reality is that it’s awesome to be able to talk about [mental illnesses], but it’s also really tough because we’ve normalized it to a point where some people think it’s kind of invalidating when people are self-diagnosing online, and I think also it’s frustrating when it gets used as an excuse to be hurtful to others.”

A 2020 study from the American Psychiatric Association (APA) showed that the increase in self-diagnoses may have occurred because of the effort to de-stigmatize mental health. Destigmatization makes mental health a more common topic of conversation, instead of a taboo subject.

Koplik said that there are both positive and negative aspects of self-diagnosing, but it can be risky because people aren’t experts and don’t know how to get the help they need. She said she has been very pleased with the way mental health stigma has changed, but acknowledged the negatives of the de-stigmatization of mental health, especially online.

“You just have to be a little cautious of people claiming to have a diagnosis when they might just be going through a rough patch, and [it] can be frustrating since it is medical information. It sort of plays down what it really means to have severe mental illness and could be disrespectful to someone who actually is medically diagnosed,” Koplik said.

A survey from the NIH recorded 89% of participants having an increase in screen time during the lockdown. During the pandemic, various studies have found that young people in particular are struggling. 61% of young adults ranging in age from 19 to 25 reported feeling high levels of frequent loneliness during the pandemic. They reported feeling symptoms of Anxiety and Depression, which suggested that it was partially due to the additional stress people were experiencing while trying to adapt to online education. Sophomore Evie Freed went through online school in eighth grade and talked about her obstacles with mental health.

“I think there has been a little bit of a spike [since COVID-19]. I think people started looking for answers to questions about themselves that they didn’t realize they had,” Freed said. “I think social media is the biggest factor though, especially with self- diagnosis. There isn’t anything wrong with self-diagnosis if you’re doing proper research, but I think a lot of people were getting their information from people who didn’t know enough about these topics or were unqualified to give this advice to other people.”

As each year passes by in the United States, medical debt rises exponentially. This means that the expense of seeing a medical professional and receiving a formal diagnosis, may not fit in one’s budget, especially if it is low-income. Pearson said that they never want to self diagnose as it could be invading, but is trying to push for some sort of nuerodivergency test.

“I have a lot of friends who are autistic and a lot who have ADHD also. I don’t relate to them exactly which is why I don’t want to say I have it, but I relate to them more than most people,” Pearson said.

Pearson and many other people experience not having a sure diagnosis.

Although they haven’t been checked by a doctor, they don’t need a diagnosis to tell them what they’re experiencing is real. One can find billions of resources to help with mental health, even without a concrete diagnosis. Yet overusing them may be harmful. Abundant cases of both overdiagnosis and misdiagnosis could lead to misunderstanding or misrepresentation of mental health disorders across every part of society.