Gemma Spake

On a structural and service level, governments and healthcare boards need categories, need evidence around prevalence to be able to commission the services to support those people.

A lot of countries, granted, are now in a position where they simply cannot keep up with the demand.

And there are a lot of complicated factors where governments aren't prioritizing the funding for mental health and for neurodivergent support services and support systems.

The problem I have is that then people turn around and blame others who are getting a diagnosis for that problem and not the fact that this is not a prioritized thing in our society.

We are truly worried about more people claiming a diagnosis.

You should actually care more about expanding mental health services nonetheless.

Whether you think people are serious or not, whether you think people are just getting that from Instagram, TikTok or not,

because having access to a professional will clear up any confusion in any direction.

I know that sounds kind of contradictory to like that whole rant I went on about social media before, but like to do a mini summary of what I'm really saying here is that

People are very confused and skeptical of increasing rates of certain conditions, and they want to put those rates and that rise down to theories about vaccines or changes in the environment, or they want to put that down to people making it up or people suddenly over-pathologizing.

I get the fear.

It's very scary for people to see this and think that something's going wrong and so they're looking for an explanation.

It's just that the explanation is a lot bigger and is a lot more complicated.

The real explanation is that

The reason we are seeing diagnosis rates increase is that criteria are broadening.

More people are finding the language to describe themselves.

More people are being identified by mental health systems and being able to self-identify and then get help, which is a good thing.

A small portion of those people are being misidentified and misidentifying themselves because of concept creep, because of social media.

often those people, like it's very rare those people ever get a formal diagnosis anyways, because it's not like they're just handing them out like candy.

The problem with that small amount of people who are getting the wrong diagnosis is firstly, that they actually don't get to understand themselves in the correct way, but also that, you know, the pressure that people are claiming to, that puts on services.