Of course, you could say that's just a niche thing, and that the communities and creators dedicated to this aren't in the mainstream. But it feels like some of them are big enough that they do have at least some level of following among the general public as well, and almost anyone on social media in general sees this sort of drama on a regular basis.
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/
I appreciate that he faces up to being bipolar rather than being fashionably autistic or pill-seeking ADHD.
I have a hard time reading that charitably. Are mental illnesses going to start being 'in-season'/'faux-pas' ?
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/sick-people-are-sick
To quote:
... she has apparently recently received a vanity diagnosis of
“ADHD and PTSD.” (This is a whole thing among more affluent
patients with bipolar disorder, recently; I will just say again
that there is no such thing as an ex-bipolar person.)
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/things-that-are-hard
The "neurodivergence movement" has captured a lot of people who are fleeing the stigma of severe mental illness note least the reality that at least 5% of people are on the schizophrenia spectrum and undiagnosed.
As for why I feel this way I got what was a very good psychiatric eval for a child 45 or so years ago. Today I can mark up the first paragraph with a highlighter and practically all of it is diagnostic of my condition but it was a pure headscratcher back then. I think it still is today and "ADHD" and "Autism" are fashionable differential diagnoses that obscure schizotaxia.
It doesn't help that there is so much emotional attachment to the construct of autism that a paper like this
https://www.princeton.edu/news/2025/07/09/major-autism-study...
that I read as saying "34%-90% of autistic people aren't actually autistic" stay firmly in the autism-affirming camp.
https://www.statnews.com/2022/02/10/theres-no-autism-epidemi...
Humans gonna human.