Wired advice warns of misdiagnoses on the Internet

2023-04-26 07:49:00

Tiktok and Instagram are teeming with videos and posts that deal with symptoms of mental illness and offer tests. “This flood of unfiltered information tempts children and young people to make self-diagnoses about these diseases. “A dangerous trend,” says Birgit Satke, head of the 147 emergency number at Rat auf Wire.

Often only short sequences or images are shown, which have a much stronger emotional impact than written text. Such contributions could exacerbate this state of affairs for young people in crisis. In addition, the content of these articles is not always technically correct.

“There is also a lot of false information and diagnoses that are not correct.” The expert advises young people who are not sure whether they have a mental illness to confide in an adult or to get help from a counseling center.