What Experts Say About ADHD-Tok
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What common discussions about ADHD exist on TikTok?
Yeah, it's super common. So here's just a little sampling of what you might hear.
For those of you who have ADHD, who is your favorite?
Five less well-known ADHD behaviors with doodles. Let's go. Number one.
ADHD behaviors you didn't know about part two.
How accurate are TikTok videos about ADHD?
Yeah, and researchers wanted to take a closer look at some of these videos to see how accurate they were. And how did they go about doing that? So they had clinical psychologists rate the 100 most popular ADHD videos at the time on accuracy, and they found less than half of the claims made in these videos aligned with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or the DSM. This is a tool that mental health experts use to help diagnose and treat their patients. Yeah, and none of the videos got a perfect score from clinicians. Many lacked nuance, like just because you listen to a song on repeat or you forget to text your friend back does not necessarily mean you have ADHD. It could be a lot of things like stress or sleep issues or a learning disability. Sure. So what is the concern here?
What concerns arise from TikTok mental health videos?
Is it that people are going to these videos, going to TikTok, trying to get real information about their mental health and finding stuff that is not necessarily actual real information? Yeah. Yeah, well, the researchers also looked at how accurate young adults with and without ADHD perceived these videos to be. And even though they gave the less accurate videos correspondingly lower ratings, they still believed the content in the video was more accurate than the clinicians said it was. So the researchers published the details this week in the journal PLOS One. And the lead author, Vasilija Karasava, she's from the University of British Columbia, said this can be problematic. They can create tension between the healthcare professionals and the people who come in for help.
She says that if people are adamant they have ADHD based on these videos, it could prevent them from getting the help they need, since these symptoms could be rooted in, say, depression or anxiety.
What guidance should people follow for mental health advice from TikTok?
What is the guidance then for people who have been going to TikTok for mental health advice? Well, first she says, see a therapist if you can. A lot of times people are going to TikTok because it's easy, free, and it builds community. She also cautions against watching too much TikTok because her team also found that people who consumed more TikTok are more likely to feel worse about their own symptoms. And she says, check the credentials of the TikTokers who are sharing medical advice. Check the credentials. Excellent advice for all kinds of things. Okay. Yes. Next topic, let's talk about lightening creating life. Yeah. So a recent study in the journal Science Advances gives new life to like an old hypothesis on how life was created on Earth with a spark of lightning. It's based on the Miller-Urey experiment from the 1950s. In this experiment, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey tried to recreate like a mini version of our atmosphere in a glass bulb. And this had hydrogen, methane and ammonia and water vapor.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What common discussions about ADHD exist on TikTok?
1:29–1:42
2
How accurate are TikTok videos about ADHD?
1:42–2:27
3
What concerns arise from TikTok mental health videos?
2:27–3:21
4
What guidance should people follow for mental health advice from TikTok?
3:21–4:48
5
How does lightning relate to the origin of life on Earth?
4:48–9:39
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from Short Wave
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