It's true. Certain circles of tumblr, tiktok, and twitter have made it "fashionable" to have mental disorders among themselves in an audience for victim points. (The uncharitable side of me would add "because physical disorders aren't so easily faked".)

This obviously does not negate my sympathy for those with the real disorders - I have some as well. It's enraging to see the real stuff be treated so lightly though.

This is such the wrong take, it feels trendy because those circles of social media / younger people have destigmatized talking about mental illness and sharing their experiences leading to a huge audience having a collective “oh shit that’s not normal” / “the normal amount of pain is zero” moment. And the communities that surround them adhdmeme or edanonymemes are spaces for people to commiserate that are now more visible than they previously were.

“Teens faking mental illness” is a folk tale older than social media.

The closest allegory is that mental illness is having its “pride” where it’s no longer a big shameful thing, you’re allowed to have it be visible, and it doesn’t make you less of a person. And just like pride you get similar “teens faking for attention”, “it’s just a phase”, “trenders” or “ugh people make it their whole personality.”

If you want a not politically charged example of something being destigmatized suddenly increasing in prominence look at the graph of the percent of left handed people over time and guess when we stopped forcing kids to be right handed.

While it's absolutely true that mental illness is being destigmatized, it's also true that large parts of this community are indeed "faking it", see /r/fakedisordercringe or search "fake disorder cringe" on YouTube.

In totality this is probably just part of the pendulum swing, and as awareness of fake disorder cringe grows, and as mental illness actually becomes "just normal" we will also see this phenomenon slowly disappear.

I just hope that all this doesn't lead to over-diagnosis of various mental disorders, because that would be a horrible outcome. We already see this with ADHD and autism, since those diagnoses are so fluid, and the nature of the "spectrum" is inherently fluid.

You can’t use those places on the internet as evidence for anything en mass. Those “point and laugh” subreddits are just the internets eternal two minutes of hate. You would be insane for basing your opinion of back people based on, the now banned, /r/c*ntown.

If your argument is “there exist people who purposely fake various disorders” then sure you’re absolutely right. You can find all breeds of crazy if you go looking for it.

But what isn’t true at all is that the noticeable uptick in people realizing they have and being diagnosed with things like depression, adhd, anxiety is just the result of people faking it.

I agree with you on everything you just said. My comment was directed at the parts of the parent's post that said:

> This is such the wrong take

And:

> "Teens faking mental illness” is a folk tale older than social media.

And I do not believe either of those statements captures the truth of the situation. Hysteria and group psychosis are also ancient phenomena, and not particularly well-understood, and so I think it's prideful and potentially harmful to preclude the current situation of mental illness, particularly when it manifests in hyper-connected online communities, from that possibility entirely.

I know you didn't really imply this in your post, but I can see in this thread others taking issue with statements like the above. Those opinions don't make me an opponent of mental health awareness, quite the opposite really. I just think we ought to be cautious and suspect when evaluating the current state of affairs, and not let current progress blind us of the potential for greater harm down the road.

> We already see this with ADHD and autism

Any source for that? With both being so often defined in terms of external behavior (usually from parents perspective), I find it hard to believe that ADHD and autism aren't severely under-diagnosed, especially with many people still not figuring out that their "quirks" and "problems" are completely typical autistic behaviors until well in their adulthood; and I know for sure that they're both still massively under-diagnosed in women.

Faking a mental disorder is a mental disorder

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factitious_disorder

Munchausen requires the person isn't doing it for some kind of personal gain in the DSM - which social media credit and clout could be classified as.

> In either case, the perpetrator's motive is to perpetrate factitious disorders, either as a patient or by proxy as a caregiver, in order to attain (for themselves or for another) a patient's role. Malingering differs fundamentally from factitious disorders in that the malingerer simulates illness intending to obtain a material benefit or avoid an obligation or responsibility

Personally, I would not consider clout in mental health communities to be 'material benefit'

> Certain circles of tumblr, tiktok, and twitter

If you go to the freakshow, of course you'll see some freaks.

Agreed. It also reminded me of the book Illness as Metaphor by Susan Sontag. In the essay she talks about the social perception and behaviors around illness and how those create real barriers to overcoming and curing disease. Specifically, the she writes about how consumption was at one time fashionable due to the gaunt physique and blasé attitude TB would often cause.

I am somewhat “disabled” now (the hell with that moniker), there’s nothing chic about it.

I’ll get better or die trying, but there’s a lot of confusion as to what all this means by both those well meaning and those who are assholes.

See /r/adhdmeme as an example.

Not a big Twitter uswr