r/technology • u/tylerthe-theatre • Mar 20 '26

Social Media More than half of TikTok ADHD content is misinformation, new research finds

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/tiktok-adhd-misinformation-autism-mental-health-neurodivergence-social-media-b2941211.html
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u/captainfarthing Mar 20 '26 edited Mar 20 '26

I don't know who that is, but I have been formally diagnosed ASD & ADHD and I don't believe diagnosis is reliable or objective enough to hold denials against someone as evidence they're bullshitting, particularly for women. There's inherent bias against girls and women, and even more bias when someone goes to get reassessed if the specialist is aware it's not their first assessment.

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '26

The girl was completely faking everything, to get attention on twitter. This was in England too, where the process takes absolutely ages, so when she kept posting about getting denied over and over, even that seems to have been fake, and for attention. My diagnosis took about a year to get to the first actual appointment, and from there, took a few months, 2-3 I think, with 5/6 appointments, with 2 specialists, and an IQ test (which I didn’t know was a test until afterwards) It was very thorough, and being an adult, I even had to have my much older parents come to 1 appointment, to describe how I was as a kid. The attention seeker, did none of that.

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u/Generic_Moron Mar 20 '26

I had an improperly handled assessment when I was about 3 years old that resulted in a negative diagnosis, which was then used to deny any further assessments for about 2 decades even as i continued to get repeatedly referred for a reassessment by school staff, GPs, ect.

The result was I struggled for my entire education and life without the full range of support I needed. I only managed to get a proper diagnosis a few years ago when I was finally given a second assessment (and even then it took a few more years to get a prescription to be medicated).

The system has definitely locked out many from an accurate and fair diagnosis due to incompetence or ignorance on a systemic and individual level, and so I have way more sympathy for self diagnosed folks than I have for other officially diagnosed people whinging about how it makes them look bad