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I'm sure the numbers of people wrongly using those terms has risen at least a bit, but I think the anecdotal evidence you have is likely to be a mixture of that and also not that.

Similar to how some people look at raw stats of autism diagnoses and think hugely more people are becoming autistic when in reality it's that we've got better at diagnosing autism; I think we (society, in at least some countries) have got better at being honest about mental health conditions. Meaning that more people, especially younger people who've grown up around less mental health stigma, will talk about having an actual genuine problem even without more diagnoses or more exaggeration. I think studies would be needed (that I'm not aware of) to figure out how many more people are using labels that don't really fit, vs how many more people are being honest about actual serious conditions.

When I was in my 20s, if I needed a day off work because of depression I would always use a bullshit excuse to avoid mentioning the actual reason. I don't any more, most of my colleagues know what issues I do or don't have. And the younger generations are starting from that place, rather than having to grow into it.

Assuming the days you took off from work because of depression were unexpected and not planned in advance, why did you feel you had to explain anything?

Why couldn't you say: "I'm sick and won't be at work today."

This is a very american trend in my experience. Americans are quite happy to tell you their long list of diagnoses, how that some how gives them some kind of exception to the rule, and how this is some how part of their identity. This kind of oversharing is common across topics from Americans but in particular oversharing of and obsession with psychological conditions seem to be a common modern stereotype of americans amongst my friends who interact with americans regularly.

I mean, I have no data for this, but I think it's a combination of two factors:

- Access to mental healthcare here is HEAVILY gate-kept by a combination of it often costing quite a lot of money, generally having longer waits than most healthcare services, heavy variability in availability by location, and insurance coverage runs the gamut between great or utterly absent, sometimes even in the same policy depending on what you need. Self-diagnosis is for many people the only diagnosis they have access to, and even if it's wrong, you can often use whatever diagnosis it is to find coping mechanisms that help you, or substances that will help you self medicate.

- Naming something medically is the only way to get institutions to pay attention to it, which can mean a number of things by itself, from getting appropriate accommodations at work or school, to getting certain kinds of coworkers or authority figures to treat you in a way that's more amenable to your mental state.

And I don't think its wrong to make it part of your identity either. Some definitely take it to a weird, unhealthy place, and also most of those people are teenagers. Teenagers do tons of stupid shit, I did tons of stupid shit. It's just part of growing up. But ultimately... it is part of you that you're going to be dealing with probably forever, so, some amount of identifying with it is probably healthy.

Edit: Also not sure how to read you calling this "oversharing?" Like I guess it could be depending what it is, but I dunno, my wife has BPD and a touch of Autism, she doesn't announce it when we meet someone but it isn't a secret either.

Everybody wants to be the one who overcame the odds or struggled bravely on. Everybody wants their story to be special because of how hard it was for them compared to everyone else.

I think some of it comes from the value the culture places on underdog stories and some of it comes from the oversaturation of everything in modern life.

I think some of it also is an overcorrection from how taboo it used to be to discuss mental health previously... so now oversharing is encouraged vs suffering in silence.

Americans, and I am speaking in stereotypes and not about a particular person, don't respect personal boundaries on topics that other cultures would not discuss openly with someone they don't know well. Like for example, you tell me, a stranger on the internet, that your wife has borderline personality disorder. That would be oversharing if we had just met in a social setting and were discussing this topic together.

I've seen this too among some younger folks and I wonder how much of this is simply standard, run-of-the-mill teenage attention-seeking and exaggeration that's not fully outgrown yet.

I guess we'll know when they turn 40 and are still saying things like "I had a panic attack" and "I'm literally shaking rn".

There’s also that linguistic phenomenon where you have to use stronger and stronger language to signify the same thing. Maybe we just think it’s ridiculous because we’re the older generation. Or at least that could be part of it.

Unc “I'm literally shaking rn” is only ever used ironically. In a culture of ever increasing extremes language follows, that’s all that is to this

I think it will continue as it's been turned into socially acceptable and even expected behavior now.

> Many will have no formal diagnosis at all or even proudly claim that they don’t trust the medical system, they’re just diagnosing themselves.

The thing is, many people have valid reasons not to trust the medical system. Not so long ago:

1. Homosexuality was considered a mental disease

2. Forced sterilization of minorities was good medical practice

3. FDA ignored warnings about pesticides being potentially harmful because that would be bad for business

4. FDA ignored warnings about pesticides being potentially harmful because that would be bad for international politics

5. Entire field of psychiatry was just basically random shit, it's not until very recently that we have any actual scientific knowledge

6. Pregnant women were presribed medicine that fucked up their fetuses

Not to mention that most likely when you go to a doctor you're not getting state-of-the-art diasgnosis, most likely the doctor is just a random guy doing his job, sometimes better sometimes worse. Personally I don't trust medical system with my mental health because medical system is a product of a society that made me have mental problems in the first place.

I mean I live in Germany where Hans Asperger oversaw the mass killing of autistic children. He decided which one were to be murdered or which had the "right kind of autism" i.e. Asperger syndrome and could serve the fatherland. (Just to be clear, the differentiation between autism and Asperger has not and had never any scientific leg to stand on.)

The term Asperger syndrome was only removed from the DSM in 2013.

For autistic children something called Applied Behavior Therapy is still the most common treatment. It is the same thing they use in gay conversation camps. Yes, literally. It can be super traumatizing to autistic children.

The way we treat neurodivergent people is absolutely abhorrent.

That said, the main issue people don't get a diagnosis is not lack of trust but lack of access. Most people can't afford it or are not able to jump over the bureaucratic hurdles to get it.

Germany is notorious for being shitty to people with mental illness. Even people with something as common as ADHD struggle to get the care they need there!

On the subject of Asperger syndrome, after learning about the history I was surprised that there are people previously diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome who were (and still are) very angry about the term being removed resulting in them being lumped in with everyone else diagnosed as autistic.

Being labeled as "autistic" could mean anything from seeming a bit strange but being highly intelligent and perfectly capable, to being totally non-communicative, being drastically intellectually and emotionally underdeveloped and being unable to function requiring 24 hour care. Some "Aspies" saw Asperger's as a very convenient way to differentiate their particular flavor of autism. Convenient enough that the usefulness of that distinction far outweighed the shadow of the terrible origin of the name itself and also the fact that it hilariously sounds like "ass burgers".

Personally, I'm glad that Asperger's was removed but I have to agree with the Aspie crowd that they got screwed over when no new term was given to replace what they had. The still grossly overbroad "3 level" system is trash. The spectrum of autism is so wide that the term is nearly useless.

> could mean anything from seeming a bit strange but being highly intelligent and perfectly capable

No, everyone that is diagnosed under ASD has some sort of care needs. If you are just a bit strange and it is not disabling in any form, then you are just strange.

People see autistic people on the internet and seem to miss that video editing exists and that the they are seeing just a very specific and carefully chosen part of this person. They are seeing the highlight reel not daily life that can look very differently.

One of the fears with removing Aspergers was indeed that some people diagnosed under Asperger might not be diagnose under ASD as it is arguably stricter.

> to being totally non-communicative, being drastically intellectually and emotionally underdeveloped and being unable to function requiring 24 hour care.

The problem is that many people see things as single line from low care needs to high care when in reality it is multi dimensional. Just being non-verbal does not mean that one is not intelligent, that is a huge stigma that non-verbal autistic people suffer. Many autistic people struggle with sensory issues but some don't. You might struggle heavily in one area but not so much in another.

If you know one autistic person, you know one autistic person.

> The still grossly overbroad "3 level" system is trash.

It is a step in the right direction because it realizes that care needs can change over the course of a persons life. You are born autistic but how disabling it is for you can change depending on how much help you get. It can get better or worse depending on your life situation.

Otherwise you have a current situation where people assume it isn't worth giving a non-verbal autistic child a proper education because they they think that they will never be able to life on their own anyway, acting like their outcomes are already predetermined. Or when someone with Asperger is assumed to never have serious care needs.

That said, people that have been diagnosed as Asperger, I don't correct them if they cling to their diagnosis. It is the diagnosis they have identified with for years or decades and if it what works for them then that is fine.

Still the new system is a good step in the right direction. Not perfect but better.

The dilution by people with no formal diagnosis become more common is scary because of how it normalizes not seeking help, which is the hardest part of actually having these issues. It creates this illusion that one should be able to treat themselves and that things like sitting at your desk all day thinking it wouldn't be that bad if you died in a car accident, or having your heartrate spike and sweating profusely while you thoughts are paralyzed are normal things that happens regularly to everyone so your inability to deal with them is a personal failing. They are not and if you do feel this way try and seek assistance from a experienced professional.

Standard among previous generation was to not seek help, stigmatize those who do, mock the issues and generally not even have vocabulary to talk about them.

This is very true, we are in a better place than the previous generation but there is still room for improve and a over abundance of something can be a problem just as easily as the absence of something.

What you're describing is a big problem [edit: for the people who get sucked into it] and, to me, is kind of the "other side" of the overmedicalization issue that this blog is complaining about. One way medicalization harms is is when people are forced into conditions they don't agree with (as the author feels they have been). The other way is when people who aren't medical professionals (and wouldn't be in a position to diagnose even if they were) adopt medical language to describe experiences.

I guess my thoughts on the trend you're critiquing is that it happens almost entirely outside of the medical community. As you describe the people who are most impacted by this often find actual medical treatment unhelpful and un-validating and turn to self-medication or other "medically inspired" coping techniques. I think the people who actually don't have these conditions and are applying medicalized treatments and explanations are opportunistically drawing on medical language because people often respect it socially. But also there are lots of people who engage in self-deception (or just normal deception) for social advantage and I don't know that people who use medical language are better or worse? A word is just a word and unless that word is actually on a medical record somewhere it only has the power you give it.

The flip side of this is of course that the medical establishment has many well-studied and documented biases. They offer poor treatment to overweight people, black people, people with mental health diagnoses, basically every vulnerable population that's been studied gets worse service from medical professionals. That very reasonably leads to people distrusting "the system" and searching for coping mechanism outside of it. I think that is generally pretty harmless and helpful - as long as it doesn't get into the realm of serious self-medication like you describe. Basically if you like using a medical term to describe your experience ("I'm being really OCD today") I don't think there's much harm in it and you may find coping mechanisms for people with ODC helpful as a bonus.

>Basically if you like using a medical term to describe your experience ("I'm being really OCD today") I don't think there's much harm in it and you may find coping mechanisms for people with ODC helpful as a bonus.

I was with you up until this point. My wife has C-PTSD, Bipolar type 2 and ADHD, along with what her psychologist describes as "Social OCD". I can't tell you how many times I've had to explain to other people that her mental illnesses are real and some days she and I just can't hang out because she smelled a smell that gave her flashbacks. Because people have normalized the language, they think "triggered" just means upset. For someone with real PTSD, it doesn't mean upset, it means their mind has come unstuck in time and they don't know who to trust or sometimes even what is real. Sometimes this lasts 5 minutes, sometimes it lasts almost all day. She just loses that time, and all I can do is try to calm her down and try to get her to take medication to re-stabilize her.

My wife has been in therapy with a PhD psychologist for 11 years, and only just this year has gotten to the point where it seems like she could probably hold down a job and keep her trauma compartmentalized like most people do all the time. People normalize the language for these debilitating full-blown disabilities and then don't understand the gravity of the situation when somebody with a legitimate mental illness of that sort of degree comes along.

Co-opting medical language for sub-disorder level dysfunctions is bullshit. And that's fine, when you're just bullshitting with your friends or whatever, but how is someone like my wife supposed to be seen or understood, let alone properly accommodated for when everybody thinks they know what a panic attack is but has never in their adult life been so panicked they became nonverbal?

I would posit your issue is not in co-option of terminology but in that ableism is still rampant and these are people who wouldn't take your wife seriously even if you described her symptoms. I have conditions that people do not uwu cutesy about on tiktok and people still illegitimate me when it inconveniences them slightly like canceling plans. People playing down disabilities the disabilities of others is extremely common. Being able to be flexible and accommodating to any degree I can to someone's disability has nothing to do with whether or not I think it is legitimate, and gating my flexibility to whether or not I personally judge someone's disability as legitimate is ableism plain and simple.

I upvoted your comment because this is also a huge issue. I just find that the co-opted terminology does worsen the quality of dialogues about the co-opted terms. People need to have the symptoms fully described for them in detail and sometimes don't believe me or think I'm exaggerating because it doesn't match their preconceived notions of what those words mean.

I'm not saying that the problem isn't ableism, it absolutely is, just that the co-opting of the terms is still harmful in that it uses up spoons and makes it harder to communicate clearly, especially with those who are stuck on the pop-culture meanings instead of actual medical meanings.

I flagrantly disagree that disbelieving someone's disability or believe someone is exaggerating because it doesn't mean their preconceived notions is something that can be helped if the culturally known depictions were specific to your wife's depictions. This is the mental health equivalent of yelling at someone in a wheelchair who can stand for short periods of time. Disbelieving someone about a disability assumes I am even capable of telling who is "really" disabled, which is an ableist belief that will not go away even if all the TikToks that say they were triggered by a minor toe stub disappeared.

In fairness, I believe that people who make jokes and light of disability suck in that I also believe this is an ableist activity. And I fully believe you that this kind of uwu-ification of disability is used as justification for ableist people to behave shittility towards your loved one.

It's not really a matter of it entirely solving the issue. As the other commenter is trying to stress, these are 2 separate issues, even if 1 underpins the other. We can and should try to solve for both. The thing is, 1 is a heck of a lot easier to solve. So why wouldn't we?

I don't think the position of "Having more accurate pop culture depictions of mental health issues and disabilities would enable better understanding from non-disabled people" is an entirely crazy one, and you haven't really made any arguments as to why we shouldn't do that.

I am so sorry to hear about what you and your wife have gone through. It sounds extremely frustrating and aggravating. I also suspect that when it comes up the people who downplay your wifes' conditions often act as if they are the insulted party.

We have an epidemic of not taking psychological conditions seriously. As my depression has worsened I've understood better the depth to which someone can fall and re-thought when it makes sense to say that I'm having a "depressive episode." I think there's a real issue of people mis-understanding diagnoses (in the way the comment I was replying to spoke about) and describing themselves as having them when their symptoms would not rise to the level of a diagnosis. Un-restrained by medicine and popularized by social media, watered-down understandings of disorders proliferate.

> Co-opting medical language for sub-disorder level dysfunctions is bullshit.

However, this I disagree with. Someone invoking PTSD or Bipolar to characterize their experience is not the same as claiming that label for themselves. I am not bipolar, but I mention the condition to talk about cyclic moods that I do experience (that are neither major depressive or manic but impact me). I think it's common to talk about a disease condition with the understanding that the condition has a range of severity.

I have a friend who was institutionalized for depression for a time. I don't think I am co-opting them to talk about my much less serious case - even though there's a similar "flattening" effect. If people hear my mental health journey first they might assume my friend is putting on airs about their situation. My friend has constantly had people imply or accuse them of overplaying their condition to get special treatment, which is gross.

> how is someone like my wife supposed to be seen or understood, let alone properly accommodated for when everybody thinks they know what a panic attack is but has never in their adult life been so panicked they became nonverbal?

My hope - and it is just a hope - is that on balance the social spread of broad and vague understandings of mental disorders is a net positive overall. The alternative feels like locking these terms away in the medical field - where when your wife (or anyone) says they're having a panic attack and the person who's there to help her has never heard of it. People are often shitty when you are going through a serious illness through ignorance and selfishness and I think medical conditions are the same as physical[1] in this case. I do not think that talking or identifying less with disorders is a net-positive.

All of these conditions have a spectrum of severity and, I believe, many people have sub-diagnostic versions of medical conditions. Those people will often improve their lives by recognizing patterns in their lives and using coping mechanisms developed for people with more severe cases. On balance I think that practice increases empathy for more severe conditions - because once people recognize a trend outside normative experience I think they often can extend it. I've also known far too many people who had life-changing adult diagnoses of conditions ("you mean this isn't what everyone is dealing with") to be set against the popularization of considering if you have a diagnosis.

[1] Mental conditions are, of course, also physical conditions but the dichotomy is widespread.

Someone can see their cyclic moods resemble bipolar disorder, use coping mechanisms developed for bipolar disorder, and gain empathy for people with bipolar disorder. Or someone can see their normal post traumatic stress resembles PTSD, use coping mechanisms developed for normal post traumatic stress, and lose empathy for people with PTSD.

Exactly this. Thank you

I'm not sure if this is "human nature" or if it's a specific cultural problem in the modern west. It's certainly true here in Canada too -- everyone uses terms that are really quite heavy duty to describe quite minor things.

I'm deaf. When I tell people this, one of the most common response is "Oh, don't worry. I'm a little bit deaf too." Now not to go policing people on their identities but -- no you're not.

Like what do I need to say? Clinically deaf. Severe-profoundly deaf. Cannot hear a fire alarm without hearing aids?

It's one thing when it's an elderly person. Yes maybe they are in fact a bit deaf too. But for all the people in their 30s or 40s who have said it to me -- the odds they all have moderate or worse hearing loss is nil! Most of the people who are saying it presumably have normal hearing. I understand that they're trying to identify with and not alienate me. But it's such a strange dynamic.

Conversations are rarely about saying truthful things, and mostly about societal theatre that is supposed to leave both parties feeling better. Nobody cares that you're deaf, what you're expected to do is to react in a way that makes the other person feel good. I don't like this either, but that's how, for the lack of better word, "normies" function.

This is an excellent summary of the issues I have faced, where if you inform someone in the middle of a conversation of an experience you had in the past where someone else has done something bad, they tell me I am being negative... But it wasn't me who did the bad deed. It is completely baffling to me, and you summarised very well how people just want to effectively be tickled instead of dealing with facts. It is very isolating.

Just start speaking ASL (or whichever) when they tell you they are deaf! Let them handle that gracefully.

>When I tell people this, one of the most common response is "Oh, don't worry. I'm a little bit deaf too."

I think that is just people being people, and that's the first "acceptable" thing that pops into their mind when they hear that. They are just trying to relate to you. They are socially conditioned to not say things like, "that's too bad", or "I'm sorry", etc.. They were probably prepping to say something about the latest weather trends or something equally banal, and now you've hit them with something out of left field that they've never encountered before. How would you like people to respond? I am a migraine sufferer, and get the same types of responses, like "oh, I get headaches too", and "my sister in-law cured her migraines with mint oil!". I mean, most of the things that most people say are rather dopey.

> I’ve been offered helpful links to TikTok ADHD influencers to help me understand them

To be fair, giving you an example of someone else who performatively pretends to have a mental illness is a great way to understand them.

> When they’re procrastinating a task that is fun “my ADHD is flaring up today”.

I mean, our industry is filled with people of all ages with ADHD (arguably because it’s one of the few industries where you can succeed while having severe ADHD), GenZ folks are just more likely to admit it in public where older millennials are more likely to either be quiet about it or ignore the fact that they are subject to it.

You’re right and it’s actually wild how many people lack the ability to just deal with it. I think they do it because having a medicalized identity gives you a kind of framework or structure to lean on in social situations. You don’t need to learn the complex social rules to get grace from other people, instead you can do this easy thing and demand it. I think it is downstream of social media displacing face-to-face social interactions.

another therapy-speak term that has spilled over is "masking".

apparently, any time that you need to politely smile when you dont feel like it is "masking"

I know people like to blame social media and just "the kids these days" in general - but I think there's another reasonable, far more charitable explanation: it's a sort of overcorrection after those illnesses being very heavily stigmatized for practically ever. It's perhaps not ideal, but if a symptom of more people who truly have those illnesses being able to get help is a small portion of people using it as a fashion statement, that's a price I think we can pay. And I'm confident it will correct itself over time.

> This is scarily obvious when I’ve worked with college students and early 20s juniors lately: A subset of them speak of everything human nature in medical and therapy speak. Common human experiences like being sad about something or having a tough day are immediately amplified into full-blown medical terms like “I’m having a depressive episode today” (which is gone by tomorrow). Being a little nervous about something is “I’m having a panic attack”. Remembering an unpleasant disagreement at work “gives me PTSD”. When they’re procrastinating a task that is fun “my ADHD is flaring up today”.

Somewhat unrelated, but I complain about the same thing in software parlance. Our work gets divided up into "sprints". A SPRINT is traditionally something you do a handful of times in your life, like when you're fleeing for your life, pursued by a bear. And then when you're a safe distance away and the adrenaline wears off, you collapse from exhaustion and rest. The idea that your employer would use that term to describe how they envision their employees structuring every day of the rest of their lives is either painfully tone-deaf, or even worse, is a brutally honest view of how they regard employee burnout.

Some of us do sprint workouts every week or two as part of sports training. Those are exhausting and require some recovery but you won't get faster unless you put in work.

But your point about misleading terminology is correct. That's why modern methodologies such as Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) have adopted the more neutral term "iterations" which doesn't imply anything about velocity.

https://framework.scaledagile.com/iterations/

Those folks are the ones who refuse to acknowledge and accept the fact that they were abused by family members while growing up, where those personality 'symptoms' are common. It is very well known that ADD and ADHD comes from abusive households. Nobody except psychologists and anyone in the mental health field would ever admit such failures in life. They will not accept the fact, and exaggeration and deflection of character faults into false medical diagnosis is what happens. Not very many doctors want to get screamed at by their patients (which would prove the doctor right) for telling them the truth of their own past, and besides, they're not even paid to tell them.

"Truth hurts, don't it" is a very true phrase. It's a very sick trend affecting Millennials and Gen Z alike, and contributes to other worse mental health and criminal outcomes.

It's not even new.

No. Please stop spreading misinformation.

ADHD is something you are born with it. If one biological parent has ADHD there is a 40% chance the child will have it as well. We already know there is a strong genetic link. It is NOT caused by trauma.

There is a huge overlap in symptoms between ADHD and complex PTSD. Yes, one needs to be careful to not confuse the two. That is why when I was diagnosed with ADHD, I was also checked for trauma or any other conditions that could explain my symptoms better. This is the recommended and required procedure for diagnosis.

Furthermore many ADHD people also often have (C)PTSD because living with ADHD can in itself be very traumatic, especially when undiagnosed. And neurodivergent people are also more likely to be victims of abuse.

ADHD is not caused by "abusive households" because again, you are born with it. Also getting an ADHD diagnosis is probably harder to get than an PTSD diagnosis because most psychologists will expect trauma and is quite normal and expected to talk about trauma in therapy. In fact the whole field of Psychoanalysis that is the second most common therapy method after behavior therapy is based on working through childhood experiences.