How TikTok manufactured a mental health epidemic

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Links:
Sadie story: / i-am-trapped-in-a-diag...
Teen Vogue: www.teenvogue.com/story/disso...
TikTok inspired surge: www.psychologytoday.com/au/bl...
Psychiatry notes about DID: books.google.com/books?id=u-o...
2006 study: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15864...
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[@SydneyWatson]

Happy Mother's Day to all the mamas out there!

[@gabrieldrummond8647]

I couldn’t make it to the end of this one. Trust me it’s not your fault. The more I see these folks trying this hard for attention my next thought is usually, “ Noah, Get the boat.”

[@MiniLinlin]

This all reeks of when boring girls decided to claim they were bipolar because they got angry, then sad, then happy. It infuriated me because I did have close contact with people with actual bipolar disorder and it's not like that, and it's definitely not quirky or fun. I'm so glad I'm not a kid in this era because it's gotten worse with each year.

[@slartibartfast2452]

They don't have disorders, they are simply authentically boring people. A sea of less than average. Not everyone has to be special, and most everyone is definitely not special, aaaaand there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Most of the world, from forever until now, has not been special. We did not get this far because of people that were special. We got this far because of everyone else. The people that ate average food, did average things, worked average jobs and had average kids. That's almost all people thought history, and that's just fine. Best way to at least be average, is to not pretend you are more than.

[@frantheman3825]

"Im glad i developed a personality before tiktok" truer words havent been spoken

[@Oegyeindraws]

I had a friend in highschool with DID. Real bad homelife, and saw only one of her alternative personalities. It wasn't this romanticized bull*

[@quillsystems5563]

I'm 48 yo and have personally met only one person with true DID. She looses hours of her life when her alter personality kicks in. She suffered from this sense shortly after high school. It lead her to self medication. If you were around her when the alter took over you couldn't recognize her. Her face changed a little and she looked like a totally different person. I speak of her in the past tense because she took her own life a year and a half ago. Before passing away she wrote a book documenting her life long struggle with DID. The book has never, and maybe will never, be published. These people on Tik Tok that claim to have DID are all frauds. You can't control the alters from emerging. They emerge to protect the inflicted from psychological harm.

[@doublea125]

My how interesting it is that

[@Bendilin]

This isn't so much a Tiktok issue as it is, "children under the age of 18 being allowed to post online and view the internet unsupervised". Maybe 18 is too extreme for some people, but there is a definitive issue with allowing kids 13 and under to just consume hours of internet content daily with zero intervention.

[@spyr0guy]

I'd have "multiple personalities" based on TikTok's definition. I call it "behaving differently with different people because literally everyone does that, it's normal human behavior." Like, you don't speak the same way to your friends as you do to your parents. That doesn't mean you're literally different people.

[@Lennykins3120]

Most of us with ACTUAL mental illness would do, and definitely try, anything to be normal. Anything to be able to function on a daily basis, and be there for not just ourselves, but our loved ones. I absolutely hate social media for what it's done in this topic.

[@tylerhuntley9454]

My mum was diagnosed with D.I.D about a year after I moved out of home. Some days she would beat me, then the next day ask - with great concern - who gave me the bruises on my arm, forgetting it was her. During one of her dissociative episodes, she cut off some of her fingers that were due to be operated on after an accident.

[@DonCarlosofFreiburg]

“I’m glad I developed a personality in a time before TikTok”… That’s spot on!

[@Wafflefrieslmdh]

As a psychology student, seeing those tiktoks has brought excruciating pain and stress.

[@joancruz2785]

One of my close friends genuinely has DID. She doesn't brag about it or put it out for the world to see. She confided in me that she has had a troubled upbringing and it took her almost a year to tell me about her diagnosis because she was scared I would see her as lesser for it.

[@SithCelia]

These Tik Tok clips are a fantastic reminder of how nice it was to have been a teenager before the Internet was in everyone's lives. I've never visited this site. I never plan to. I find the entire premise of what TT is about to be essentially training young people how to become narcissists. It's hard to put my finger on here, but it really does seem like these younger generations of humans are limiting themselves by trying to come up with more labels and categories to try to fit into rather than learn how to embrace their authenticity. This also makes it a lot more difficult for me to want to engage with people who are much younger than me, since I can already tell I'll be dealing with a whole lot of ADHD and social media obsession.

[@GreatRottweiler]

Never have I seen such a place where a generation is so proud of accomplishing nothing like on TikTok.

[@friendly_introvert]

Psychologist here! I have done in depth research into DID and there is no doctor on the planet which would recommend gender reassignment surgery for a patient with DID. It makes me genuinely infuriated when I see this disorder faked or romanticised online.

[@HayK_730]

I can’t believe that I’m just now seeing this video of yours but I’m so grateful that you’re bringing light to this.

[@ixcellestev12]

I'm finishing my Clinical Psychology MS and I'm baffled that the side that belive in science keeps actual behavioral scientists and Psychologists out of the conversation.