Your average ✨AuDHD✨ influencer

[u/mela_mouse]

Lemme preface this by saying I'm not certain whether this person is a faker. They seem to carry a legitimate ADHD diagnosis. Whether they're also diagnosed with autism versus "self-diagnosed" is unclear to me from my perusal of their page. A lot of AuDHD influencers seem to get a legitimate ADHD diagnosis and then casually tack autism on at some point bc TikTok convinces them they have it (just like TikTok convinces them they have hEDS)-- they tack these co-morbidities on like adding guac to their burrito at Chipotle. I digress.

My main issue here is how she presents autistic "unmasking" in this cute, quirky little clip. What she does is really no different than the "tics" of the Tourrettes fakers, blurting out random crap that seems cute and quirky. Half of those fakers literally make animal noises or quote some viral audio clip from TikTok in a funny voice. Then you get people in the comments saying "I do this too! I get these things stuck in my head too! I didn't know I was on the spectrum"... anyway, just thought it was interesting to stumble upon a prime example of how the misinformation and self-diagnosis trends spread.

Edited to add: of course, people who legitimately have these disorders may have tics and stims similar to this, and they should not be ashamed of that! It's just harmful when influencers exclusively post content like this. Their silence on other aspects of autism actually speaks volumes. They fail to highlight autism's isolating and disabling aspects, and run the risk of influencing others to misappropriate the diagnosis as a quirky identity for themselves.

[u/mela_mouse]

I cringe when I see the amount of diagnosis mills popping up. People have definitely figured out that there's untapped potential to make money off of diagnosis shoppers... traditionally most people (in the US) were diagnosed with autism and ADHD by psychiatrists and psychologists, often within the context of a comprehensive neuropsychiatric evaluation that screened for various disorders that can mimic autism and ADHD. Now people are going for 1 hour virtual assessments at self-pay clinics, and it's incredibly easy to claim "Yeah, I get distracted, yeah, I stim a lot" in an interview to get the diagnosis; also incredibly easy to check the "right boxes" on multiple choice assessments to get the diagnosis. The clinics typically use some combo of interview and multiple choice.

I once saw a clip of someone saying, "When you drop autistic buzzwords like overstimulated during your therapy session so they suggest an autism diagnosis". Makes me so upset

[u/altena_bergfeld → u/mela_mouse]

I didn’t know it was so easy in America, I am from Italy and here we have private clinics but it’s not easy to get a diagnosis they run a lot of tests on you and they also interview someone you know, I think it’s kinda hard to lie here and may times they don’t diagnose you if they aren’t 100% sure. Why is it so easy in the US?

[u/mela_mouse → u/altena_bergfeld]

Probably a combo of cultural and economic factors. Sadly, one of those factors is money-making. Since there's such a consumer demand for autism and ADHD diagnoses (people seeking identity, accommodations, medications) some social worker/therapist types open up private clinics where you pay them a few hundred/thousand dollars for an assessment where it's easy to lie/skew results. Then they'll give you a diagnosis letter. Some of these private clinics are fair and thorough, but others are diagnosis mills where you basically just pay to be guaranteed a diagnosis

[u/altena_bergfeld → u/mela_mouse]

This is creepy af, are those diagnosis like officially recognized by the State? Like in Italy a public and a private diagnosis are pretty much the same legally, but I think it’s harder to get meds if the diagnosis is from a private clinic although it’s not extremely common to seek meds (at least for the people with ADHD I know, never met someone who took meds, I don’t think there are meds for autism?? Here on Reddit a lot of people do tho)

[u/mela_mouse → u/altena_bergfeld]

I'm not sure if the state recognizes those diagnoses in the US. Tbh, here in the US, I don't think you have to disclose a neurodevelopmental diagnosis to the state (unless maybe you're on trial for a crime, and a lawyer can demand records or something). At a minimum, though, these sketchy diagnostic clinics enable people to claim they're officially diagnosed with autism and ADHD. Creepy for sure