Teenagers diagnose themselves with rare mental illnesses like borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, multiple personality disorder, and dissociative identity disorder after watching TikTok videos from creators who claim to suffer these conditions, or claim expertise about them. Mental health professionals, see increasing numbers of these troubled teens, but attribute most of their symptoms to a far more pervasive condition. Some 600-700 million views on videos with related hashtags make this new wave hard to ignore. How do you talk to someone who’s convinced she’s become a TikTok doc, and mental patient, at the same time?
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31 replies on “TikTok Doc: Teens Self-Diagnose with Extremely-Rare Severe Mental Illnesses”
At the risk of being a conspiracy theorist I will say that this is all part of the plan. Teach our children to be victims. The more things they can be victims of the better off the left will be. Because we are not capable of solving our problems on our own, and we all know, the one with the most victim points wins in the lefts world.
For once, and hopefully the last time, I have to disagree with Scott. My eldest, at age 10 or so was becoming uncontrollable, even to the point his teacher got with me about it. She suggested mental health treatment, so being concerned, I did that. Off we went to the local mental health clinic, where he was immediately diagnosed as ADHD, and prescribed drugs. After a couple of weeks, his teacher reported that he was much worse, as he was at home, so back we went to the clinic. They DOUBLED his dosage. Then he became absolutely insane, so back we went again. They then DOUBLED the double dosage. It was at that moment I said NO MORE. I had been reading articles about red food coloring and symptoms like my son had, so I cut out buying red hot dogs, chocolate and super sugary treats. He almost immediately calmed down. I got very creative with making homemade treats so all three of my sons would be content. Carob was a wonderful substitute for the chocolate we all loved and I made popcorn and granola/peanut butter-stuffed apples. Needless to say, none of them got candy until they were old enough to buy it for themselves.Kids do not need all that sugar and it’s true that red food coloring, such as in red hot dogs and M&Ms is not good for them, either.
I agree, Cathy. I’m not as active on here as I would like, but hearing how dismissive Mr Ott was of “food coloring” and other, frankly crap, that is put in our food shows that he is a little out of touch with reality. I respect my elder generations, but frankly I am not taking health advice from a generation that grew up on Wonder Bread and boxed cereal.
I’m not one who thinks the government is
tryingto poison US with the preservatives or other chemicals put into food, but I do think that this system of regulation and distribution and subsidies has created a feedback loop that is *progressively* making things worse, and theback in my dayboomers who refuse to listen to our concerns is another reason why the left is so good at locking in votes for generations. They don’t care more than the right does, but they at least pretend to show some empathy.While some of the processing stuff they put in our food may not noticeably affect everyone and certainly not to the same degree, it can have profound effects on some. I was a skeptic in applying diet screening for our older son who was out of control in school. Seeing the dramatic change for the better was undeniable. Seeing the very adverse personality side effects from the Retalin he took, the use of such mood altering drugs needs careful monitoring or avoidance if possible.
The first few pages of “Three Men in a Boat” described this self-diagnosis stuff back in 1889.
If only adults now had the attitude of J’s doctor.
Oh No! There’s something wrong with me!!! I don’t recall being so messed up in my teen years that I believed or acted like a mental basket case, much less someone with a diagnosable condition. Probably blocking those memories, I guess. I was introverted, just as I’ve been all my life, but I always had at least one close friend, and socialized a little bit.
I’ve never used any social media – this website is about as close as I get to media and being social with it – so I can’t identify with the compulsion and addiction to using apps like TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, etc. But..being introverted, I can imagine that if I were a youth in this day and age, I’d probably be a mental case. Kids have so much more to deal with than most of us had when we were adolescents and teens. I really feel for them, but kind of dislike them anyway.
Scott, last time I was in China (Dec 19) that darned Beijing firewall was still preventing me from accessing Google. Had to Bing everything (unless of course, you were an American with Xpress VPN).
So did all the local Chinese. Bing Bing Bing!
So for whomever to claim TikTok just surpassed Google as the most visited site is a little unfair. TikTok is seen by ALL the Chinese and the rest of the world. Google is seen by none of the Chinese but the rest of the world.
Not that I’m a huge fan of Google and hate TikTok, but some context to that statement had to be made.
Love’m or hate’m, Google is actually usefull. TikTok, obviously not so.
So is DuckDuckgo, and Brave(?). The interface to Brave is so close to Chrome that I wouldn’t put it passed Alphabet to just make up a browser called Brave to make people think it’s not Google.
IIRC, Brave was developed and launched by the guy ejected from Mozilla for various un-PC and un-woke badthink. Since most of the browsers are starting to use the same interface I think it is more likely they’re all just playing follow the leader.
Or Google has some borg spys planted in every company. Could be both these days.
Didn’t know that about Brave. Thanks for that!
Yeah, I think Tik Toc was created by the Chinese to finish us off. I’ve seen people on the platform show me videos, and Tik-Toc videos shared on other platforms … and I see facebook has even attempted to get in on the action with its “Reelz” (which looks to me like facebook’s version of Tic-Tok).
What I see, mostly, is young women doing sexy poses and dances, usually in revealing or at least highly-flattering clothing – doing whatever the latest “viral” dance is, or some slapstick joke. It’s absolutely inane. If China can get the West to waste all of its time producing and watching these videos instead of, as my dad used to say, “doing something useful and constructive” … well, we’re just hosed, I think.
Facebook itself is bad enough.
There is something wrong with the children but it has nothing to do with your commentating.
What is wrong with the children is that they are out of touch with life and they are out of touch with life because we taught them to be out of touch with life.
We taught them to be out of touch with life because we are out of touch with life and we have this God complex so we created in our own image.
Out of touch with life is when we do not react to our environment but instead we react to what we think about our environment.
Maybe a segment on this subject?
Mike Rowe mentioned something similar in his interview with John Stossel. More about the snowflake generation and who was to blame? “We were” as the parents that taught them, and then also a more general “we” of those that stood by while vocational arts, ie shop class, was slowly decreased and then removed from schools.
I think also the comment that two parent families that did not really have a parent in the house led to kids more interested in the opinion of their peers because those were the people most around them. Without a job providing adult feedback or an active social life through a community in other cases it wasn’t peers but the artificial picture of the TV that informed and raised a number of kids.
I think some of the punk and counter cultural music groups used a theme like that in some of their music videos. Everyone just watching a screen and not looking around or thinking for themselves.
Something Scott was saying about his friend who was unruly and had to eat a special diet reminded me of my cousin. He’s a few months older than I am, born in Sept of ’68. His parents were together and his Mom didn’t work outside the home. When he was about 8 or 9, a doctor told my Aunt that my cousin had ADD and wanted to put him on Ritalin. It was the beginning age of the over medicating of kids. My Aunt refused to put him on drugs, and instead, switched his diet to no sugar, no dairy, no artificial colors or artificial flavors. He calmed down extremely – his grades improved and he no longer got into fights at school. On those occasions when he’d get some candy he wasn’t supposed to eat or a friends mom would give him Kool Aid, it was a dramatic difference. He’d become jittery and would sometimes have violent outbursts. Yes, it was work to keep a kid on a special diet, but he never had to take medication. As an adult, he’s a high school history teacher. He doesn’t have to be quite as careful anymore, but it still affects him when he eats junk food. Maybe it’s a Gen X thing, and maybe it’s my cousin’s story, but I don’t blindly trust doctors. I go see one when I have an medical issue, but any drug I’m prescribed, I fully research before I take it. If I have concerns about a medication, after reading all the info I can find, I’ll sometimes call my doctor and talk about other options. It’s much easier to do that in the internet age, lol.
Thanks for your post. Our older son born in 1967 went through the same issues. Unfortunately we did try out the medication briefly and he was a zombie with daily headaches. We came across info on the low sugar and avoidance of food dye and preservatives diet. Took him off the meds and kept to the diet. Worked wonderfully, he was back with all his active personality, but much better focus and no mood swings of any note. Thank God my wife found the info on the alternate treatment. It didn’t come from our doctor or school. He had trouble forgiving us for taking the Fruit Loops away. Also had the same experiences with others indulging him in common highly processed foods and treats.
I’m glad you were able to find a non-drug solution that worked for your son. I know there are some cases where the meds are essential for the child, but way too many kids are drugged because the parents aren’t told about options to try and they don’t go looking for the information.
It’s a well known phenomena that a significant percentage of medical students will think they have whatever disease or dysfunction they happen to be studying at the time. As they progress in their medical education they learn to recognize and ignore this tendency.
As it turns out, this is a positive thing (mostly) in medical students. The kind of people that go to med school to the point where they’re studying such things are there because they have a sincere interest and it’s a good thing for them to have some empathy for people who are having health issues. It’s not a good thing and it’s not healthy if they don’t learn to prioritize things, including fear of having a medical issue themselves.
In med school the instructors always bring up this phenomena at some point so students can be aware that it exists. I kind of think that if they didn’t do that the only people who made it all the way through med school would be raging hypochondriacs or emotionless robots.
The problem with medical advice dispensed over the internet is there are no safeguards, no reality checks and no counterpoints to compensate for confirmation bias. This goes for everything from teens on TicTok to adults seeking information about COVID-19 and every other human malady you might think up.
There is always someone out there that will confirm your worst suspicions. ALWAYS.
Sadly the advice medical students receive in this regard is not common to a standard education and it should be. You have to be educated, you have to be trained or train yourself not to believe everything you want to be true and to objectively examine information to the best you are able.
There are other professions where forcing an objective view is also a part of the training, I’m just using the medical field as an example common to us all. All of these professions, including medical, use a mechanism called “rule out” to counter this confirmation bias. If you want to know how that works, ask and I’ll explain it.
Children, while not solely vulnerable are particularly susceptible to this problem. Children by their necessary nature are egocentric. They try to apply everything to themselves. They are in a hard coded learning mode wherein they take nearly everything into themselves and try to apply it to themselves.
This is a known fact to most giant tech companies. That they exploit this facet of human nature purely for profit in complete disregard to the damage they’re doing is despicable.
We need many more parents like Steve who don’t allow their teens unlimited and unfettered access to social media. It needs to be incremental until they show that they can handle what they see.
I see this with a lot of people at church, the younger children get access much earlier since they want what the older siblings have.
Amen on “parents like Steve”.
Thankfully my two boys are fairly close in age and they grew up without any electronic screen but the family TV. That was just at the beginning of the era of gaming consoles. I remember them going to visit friends who had those games but they would never come home begging for one themselves. It was just a “special toy that someone else had” to them, like a race car track or an erector set. There was no peer/social pressure of the sort that would come along later with phones that do everything.
I think that by that time they were well into the formation of their personalities and more interested in cars and girls. Which is a whole ‘nother set of parenting issues.
This information overload thing is new to the human condition, we don’t really know what it will do to our kids, and their kids. People would be wise to follow Steve’s cue on how to deal with kids and tech.
Bill did that great “Afterburner/Firewall” called Five Alarm Fire a few years ago. Our chickens have come home to roost. I say our because my youngest is smack in the middle of this topic and she’s 30.
I had forgotten about that Afterburner so I went and watched it again. I see and agree with your point …
My kids are a little older than your youngest daughter and they’re “Steve Green” style parents, or maybe even a bit stricter.
My eldest grandson a few Christmases back had the choice between an iPad and climbing gear for his Christmas present. He chose the climbing gear.
That’s not to say they’re immune from this problem though.
Last year that same grandson was here for a visit. He staged at my place for a few days before boarding a yacht as crew for a cruise. We were in my “shop” which is actually about as high-tech a man cave as you could imagine (where I’m am writing this from now). He was on the phone talking to one of his buddies from back in Seattle and telling him how amazing “Grampa’s shop” is and I overheard him say “Sure, I’ll post some pics on facebook for you!”
I was instantly pissed off to the max. I said …
“Like hell you will! You’ll respect my privacy or I’ll have a chunk of your ass hanging on the back wall drying in the sun!”*
If you knew me you’d know that’s neither out of character nor an idle threat.
He said “Oops, sorry Grampa, I didn’t even think of that.”
I said “It was the FIRST thing I thought of when you said that.”
We then proceeded to have a conversation about why you should not share anything that’s not yours to share, or that you do not have explicit permission to share.
And my point is that even those kids, who are raised very well, don’t even think about something like respecting someone’s privacy when it comes to electronically sharing with the whole world whatever the hell they’re doing at the moment.
*(Edit: Before someone gasps clutching their pearls and says “Do you really talk to your grandchildren like that?” … You bet I do, to the ones who are now adults. I’m Grandpa, the eldest, most experienced, most dangerous male in my family. If you’re one of my grandbabies you’ll show some respect or you’ll wish you had.)
It snowed here yesterday and I was overjoyed looking out my office window at no less than 10 kids sledding down the hill that makes up the backyards of those across the creek from me. Cold, wet snow and they were all out there having a great time. Squealing with laughter! They took a break around lunch for what I can only presume was grilled cheese and tomato soup, and maybe some hot chocolate (though I was never a fan) then were back out until almost dark. Oh, I and saw not one pull out a phone to take a selfie!
To pull a phrase – it warmed the cockles of my heart.
That’s what any “normal” kid ought to be doing on a winter’s snowfall.
If I lived there and I had kids living at home I’d kick them outside after confiscating their phones and tell them not to come back until sunset.
I knew you guys were getting some snow over there, you were in or close to the Winter Storm Warning posted by the NWS. We got some inconsequential flurries that didn’t stick at all. Got a little below freezing last nigh and warmed up to about 47F right as I write this.
One of my Net Control Operators (NCOs) on SkyWarn, where we hold a weekly training and information net on local 2M (VHF), 440 MHz (UHF) and 220 MHz (VHF) band repeaters — Keeps saying he can’t wait to get some snow. Which proves that just because you can operate a ham radio doesn’t rule out the possibility of being an idiot. 🙂
I don’t mind a little snow though If I had my ‘druthers I’d druther not have to deal with it. It’s not that I mind the snow itself, I’m from a place where a flake that falls in September can be on the ground until May. The snowfall here is nothing by my scale. It’s my fellow Virginians who have no clue how to drive in it that I’d as soon avoid.
That said, if it does snow significantly here this winter, and it doesn’t do that every winter, I’ll be right out there with those kids you’re talking about. Not sliding down hills, I’m too old for that and would probably hurt myself. Or have a heart attack climbing back up the hill …
I’ll be going up and down the road with my tractor plowing out all my neighbors driveways, for free and a little good will. And having every bit as much fun as those kids on the hill do.
That’s what normal ought to look like in America.
It was just enough to make yesterday morning interesting. Mostly green showing through, but fun for a day. Too windy to have a cocktail by the fire, but oh well.
Yea, people down here can’t drive for crap in the snow/ice. When I first got here, I tried to explain to people that that cool 4WD doesn’t do much to stop a truck on ice.
I survived 2 winters in Buffalo in my life. 100+ inches of snow. But it was fairly powdery, they had lots of equipment and it was pretty flat. Though I noticed that most of the people I worked with had a real beater they drove Nov – Feb.
Here the hills are just enough to get squirrely in a hurry if you are not careful.
Yeah, and Amen on how these guys think their 4×4’s are ‘magic’.
I have a Jeep and know how to use it. My neighbor, who’s older than me, bought a stock Jeep “so he could get around anywhere he wanted to go too”. The guy is a retired high tension lineman, he’s no fool. Fools don’t live to retirement in jobs like that.
But he has no experience with snow and ice either.
The first winter he had that Jeep we got significant snow, I think it was 3 years back but I’m not sure. It was cold enough that it drifted and windy enough that the drifts were significant too. That storm wouldn’t even have shut down schools where I’m from but they were closed for 3 or 4 days here.
I do volunteer work for the NWS so I knew what was coming, what to expect from the weather and what to expect from the local people. I drove into town and replenished my perishables, fueled up and hunkered down to watch the chaos commence.
It snowed 8-10″. My neighbor was so pleased he had bought that Jeep because now he had a chance to prove to his wife that uncomfortable, noisy, hard to drive vehicle was worth the effort and expense. They both bundled up to go look at the rare but pretty Winter Wonderland (to me it’s a white desert) and sight see.
He got 20′ out of his garage and high centered. Stuck tight. There he sat.
I went over and pulled him out with my Jeep. He barely spoke a word to me and I could see he was mad enough that was probably a good thing.
Then I dug out his driveway with my tractor’s loader bucket.
He has a tractor too, but no loader. He’s cheap and didn’t think he’d ever need one. A loader bucket is like 50% of the useful application of a tractor, BTW. My tractor is 4wd hydrostatic, his is 2wd manual. If he had tried to pull his Jeep out with that the wheels would have just spun.
He’s stubborn, he still has the Jeep. But he bought some more aggressive tires so we’ll see where he ends up the next time it snows.
When I was a teenager I thought about – not much honestly – I was pretty self-absorbed, like most everyone else. Any other thoughts were mostly about a pretty blonde.
I was sure there was something wrong with me, my dad kept telling me there was and that I’d better grow out of it.
I “think” I did, though my wife (not the pretty blonde, fortunately) does not always agree.
I always thought the only thing wrong with me was the fact the pretty blonde wasn’t interested!
Well played Kurt. I was in the same boat, but it was a brunette.
I’m living the inventors’ dream. I’ve been watching college level talks on ancient history.
I am very impressed with Steve’s comments – common sense, good parenting! It is true that if there are problems in the marriage, kids will connect with a good friend. My son did many years ago, and the two are still close today although they have very different life styles. Sadly, my husband and I were not there for him, but God found him a life long friend.
I do not understand, Scott, your comment about Bill. Did anyone not get the memo that he and his wife are going through serious bouts of Covid. I was surprised at your joking that you never really know “where Bill is.” I do not see the humor in that. I do not expect “unkindness” from you.
Scott mentioned in a reply to someone else with a similar comment the reminder that they record all of these on Tuesdays and Bill hadn’t announced anything publicly until Wednesday.
I think they sometimes try to be light hearted about things until it is officially bad news.
Thank you for clearing that up! One of the reasons I enjoy RA so much is that the character of these men – unlike so man so-called journalists, is such a change from the majority of what is available on line. I especially enjoy their humor.