Misunderstandings of psychology cause people to believe in illnesses that do not exist
Mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety disorders are becoming more common, especially among young people. Demand for treatment is growing, and prescriptions for some psychiatric medications have increased in recent years. But critics point out that self-medication and making diagnoses without going to the doctor can lead to even more mental illnesses.
The growing cultural focus on mental health has clear benefits. This increases awareness, reduces stigma and encourages help-seeking. However, this may also have its costs. Critics worry that social media contributes to the development of mental illness and that ordinary unhappiness is becoming pathological through the overuse of diagnostic concepts and “therapeutic language.”
British psychologist Lucy Foulkes argues that trends in attention and prevalence are linked. Her “prevalence inflation hypothesis” suggests that increased awareness of mental illness may lead some people to misdiagnose themselves when they are experiencing relatively mild or transient problems. Foulkes's hypothesis suggests that some people have overly broad beliefs about mental illness.
In a new study, researchers examined whether people with broad beliefs about mental illness are more likely to self-diagnose.
They defined self-diagnosis as a person's belief that they have a mental illness, regardless of whether they received a diagnosis from a professional. The researchers asked a nationally representative sample of 474 American adults whether they believed they had a mental disorder and whether they had been diagnosed by a health care professional.
Mental illness was common in the survey results: People who self-diagnosed but did not seek professional help tended to have broader beliefs about the illness than those who did.
Findings from the analysis support the idea that expanded beliefs about mental illness promote self-diagnosis and thus may increase the apparent prevalence of mental disorders. People who have a lower threshold for defining distress as a disorder are more likely to identify themselves as having a mental illness.
The thing is, people assume that raising awareness about mental health may come with a cost. In addition to improving mental health literacy, it may increase the likelihood that people will mislabel their problems as pathologies.
Incorrect self-diagnosis can have negative consequences. Labels can become personality-defining and self-limiting as people begin to believe that their problems are stable, hard-to-control aspects of their personality.
Additionally, unwarranted self-diagnosis can lead to people experiencing relatively moderate level of distress, will seek help that is unnecessary. A recent Australian study found that people with relatively moderate levels of distress who received psychotherapy worsened more often than they improved.
Cultural shifts are encouraging increasingly expansive definitions of mental illness. However, by pathologizing some forms of everyday distress, they may have an unintended negative side.