Australians are increasingly diagnosing themselves with complex mental health conditions after scrolling through social media or chatting with artificial intelligence in a shift experts say risks misdiagnosis, delayed treatment and worsening symptoms.<\/p>\n
Clinical psychologist Professor Jill Newby from UNSW Sydney says the rise in people diagnosing themselves with conditions such as ADHD or OCD after seeing relatable online content is becoming a serious concern.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re looking at information online or watching videos, you might not even be searching for that information,\u201d she tells AAP.<\/p>\n
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By continuing you agree to our Terms<\/a> and Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cBut it\u2019s relatable – you can empathise with that person or see similarities in your own experience – and that can lead you down a rabbit hole of self-diagnosis.\u201d<\/p>\n Prof Newby says the language of diagnosis has crept into everyday conversation, and while it\u2019s something that can reduce stigma, it also blurs the line between normal human experience and mental illness.<\/p>\n \u201cOCD is a particularly interesting one because the symptoms are actually quite common,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cIntrusive thoughts are very normal – around 90 per cent of people have them. The difference between that and OCD is the severity and impact of those experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n She says many Australians are now convinced they have a disorder simply because they recognise themselves in symptoms described online.<\/p>\n \u201cWe run a risk of pathologising what are quite normal human emotions and normal human experiences,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n That tendency is being magnified by algorithms that serve up more of the same content, reinforcing people\u2019s beliefs.<\/p>\n \u201cAccess to social media increases risk because information gets sent to you that reinforces what you\u2019re worrying about.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you believe you have OCD, you\u2019ll be fed information that convinces you you\u2019re right.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a phenomenon that has also caught the attention of the Australian Medical Association, which is confronting a different but related digital danger – fake medical professionals appearing across social media.<\/p>\n AI-generated images are being used to front Facebook pages for fictitious doctors claiming to offer advice for issues including men\u2019s health, dermatology, weight loss and sex therapy.<\/p>\n AMA president Dr Danielle McMullen says the rise of fabricated \u201chealth professionals\u201d is eroding public trust in genuine clinicians.<\/p>\n \u201cProfiles like this are really dangerous because the community doesn\u2019t know what they can or can\u2019t trust online when things are purporting to be from a health professional but they really aren\u2019t,\u201d she told AAP recently.<\/p>\n \u201cThese aren\u2019t doctors behind these profiles – they\u2019re bad actors out there to either instil fear in communities, make a profit or just pure scammers.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of the pages have even been caught spruiking medicines falsely claimed to be approved by Australian regulators, while others collect personal data under the guise of offering health advice.<\/p>\n For Prof Newby, the spread of this kind of misinformation underscores how blurred the digital health landscape has become.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are being fed content that looks authoritative, often dressed up to sound medical, but it\u2019s not always factual or balanced,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n She believes the same pattern of misplaced trust is playing out in mental health, with AI chatbots and social media influencers shaping how Australians interpret their own symptoms.<\/p>\n A recent UK survey by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy found nearly one in 20 people are comfortable talking to an AI chatbot about their mental health, while one in 10 seek support from social media influencers.<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough such accounts can help with psychoeducation, I feel it\u2019s important to highlight the considerable differences between accessing information about mental health on social media compared to a two-way, interpersonal experience with a registered therapist,\u201d BACP therapist Kate Bufton warns.<\/p>\n \u201cInfluencers talking to a general audience often have to work in broader strokes due to the time-limited nature of the content and the design of the platforms.<\/p>\n \u201cNuance and the complexity of the individual and their experiences can often get lost.\u201d<\/p>\n Although it\u2019s not something that has been documented, reports within the profession suggest patients have taken AI-generated transcripts into counselling sessions in order to challenge their therapists.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the makers of ChatGPT announced plans in August to adapt how the technology responds to users showing mental and emotional distress after legal action from the family of 16-year-old American Adam Raine, who took his own life after months of chatbot conversations.<\/p>\n While such examples might sound extreme, Prof Newby says Australia is not immune.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re seeing people arrive to therapy having already diagnosed themselves – and sometimes they argue with their doctor, saying \u2018Well, this is what the internet told me\u2019. That impacts the trust people have in health professional advice,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Her concern isn\u2019t about people seeking help online but about what happens next: \u201cI\u2019d love to see it the other way around – people notice symptoms, then access health professional support. But I suspect a lot are self-diagnosing and leaving it at that.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they\u2019re waiting a long time before accessing help because of whatever they\u2019ve seen on the internet, that could make their symptoms a lot worse and harder to treat.\u201d<\/p>\n Prof Newby believes there\u2019s a solution: using technology not to reinforce fears but to balance them.<\/p>\n \u201cWouldn\u2019t it be amazing if someone searching for OCD got fed evidence-based information from \u2018OCD Australia\u2019, if such a place existed?\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they were looking at eating disorders, there could be a requirement that trusted, factual information is shown alongside it.\u201d<\/p>\n She wants social media platforms to allow users to reset their algorithms, breaking the feedback loop.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re really worrying about OCD, you (should be able to) reset your algorithm to start again – so it\u2019s not just continually feeding that information to you,\u201d she suggests.<\/p>\n Prof Newby says digital tools can still play a positive role if users are taught how to critically assess what they\u2019re consuming.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a role for everyone to be mental-health literate.<\/p>\n \u201cTo ask: is this accurate, is it factual, are there other perspectives I should read in addition to this?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australians are increasingly diagnosing themselves with complex mental health conditions after scrolling through social media or chatting with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[2840,49,48,84,393,394,7460],"class_list":{"0":"post-271140","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-mental-health","13":"tag-mentalhealth","14":"tag-society"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}