As you can tell by the lack of original posts on lifesfinewhine recently I have been spending much more time on social media than I should. Actually, I started virtually watching a Thai drama with a friend but that’s neither here nor there. Back to social media. Since I suffer from anxiety and depression, I watch a lot of mental health related content.
Recently, I keep seeing videos about people talking about their experiences with mental illnesses and the symptoms they experience. I think that’s great since mental health is something we need to talk about openly just like physical illnesses. However, I keep noticing something else.
People in the comments keep self-diagnosing or diagnosing themselves just by watching these videos alone. Like a shockingly large number of comments are from people saying I experience this too I must have blah blah blah…
Except you don’t. Or maybe you do. I don’t know and neither do you because only a professional can and should be giving out diagnoses for mental health disorders. Just because you exhibit one or two symptoms doesn’t mean you have that mental disorder or any for that matter. A lot of symptoms can also be things that people experience in general. A lot of symptoms of different disorders are also very similar. And not just for mental illnesses. Some of those symptoms can also be caused by physical illnesses.
Professionals have been through years of studying and practice to be able to accurately diagnose mental disorders. They also learn about both physical and mental illnesses so they can rule those out before giving you a diagnoses. Most of the time you have to do a bunch of physical tests like checking your vitamins/iron levels etc. to make sure it’s a mental health issue and not a physical one. And even when physical illnesses are ruled out, your doctor will have to rule out a bunch of mental illnesses with similar symptoms to make sure they are diagnosing you correctly. I went through all that and it really sucked but at least I knew exactly what I had and that helped me a lot when it came to dealing with the symptoms.
If you feel like you have something, please talk to a professional so you can be properly diagnose and start figuring out the best way to deal with the illness. Don’t try to use information on the internet especially on social media. Self-diagnosing can be extremely dangerous for you and those around you. Especially if your symptoms are severe and you end up diagnosing yourself incorrectly.
I had a music/reacting to your favourite songs post planned for today but honestly this was kind of freaking me out so I just wanted to quickly make a post about this since I know a lot of my followers are younger and therefore sometimes easily impressionable.
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