Technology

Today I learned some people actually think tiktok is the place for accurate medical information

The mental health misinformation (or more charitably, widespread misunderstanding) on TikTok is fucking wild. Especially in regard to ADHD, autism, and couples therapy

Great to know! Now do ADHD.

I'm getting kinda tired of being flooded with ADHD memes that are just like, "I sometimes get distracted" or, "I don't like doing chores".

Journalistic standards are remarkably low on TikTok. One might go so far as to say that they are entirely absent.

No surprise

Wait a minute, you mean to tell me that people on TikTok will lie to everyone for views? /s

It disturbs me that people would consider TikTok an accurate source of....anything.

This is probably what you can expect when the subject matter is as fraught as anything-mental-health can be, and when what passes for clinical experts willing and able to share information on it are so rare as to be unicorns, plus many of them are working from outdated DSM criteria anyhow.

I was clinically diagnosed during the pandemic, then turned unpacking my own experience of autism into a new special interest (lol of course I would do that). I specifically follow quite a few accounts on tiktok belonging to health care practitioners and researchers, and I regard what they have to say in that light, while I also follow lots of 'hey-I-self-diagnosed-now-let's-talk-about-it' accounts and consider what they have to say in that light.

I'm left with the impression that the researchers and practitioners are in an exciting, evolving field in which the subject matter is less-well-known than we might all like, and that the lay autistic folk sharing their experiences are doing it because frankly, the experts weren't filling that need and what do high-masking/hyperverbal autistic folk do when we know a thing or two? We infodump, that's what we do. (like this. you're reading it now. sorry, not-sorry)

Are we always right? Heavens, no.

But, is the bar low to begin with? Oh, yes. Yes, it is. For example, while these tiktokers are sharing what they think (maybe it's wrong, or DSM-inaccurate, etc.) there are also charlatans out there waving autism around like it's a boogeyman your children get if they receive vaccinations, when there's no evidence to support claims like that.

Inaccuracy was measured against the Autism diagnosis in the DSM and standard approved treatments. These are always going to be out of date because you're not allowed to run tests on humans. Something about ethics. So the DSM and psych industry are always playing catch-up. Meanwhile, you have a large group of people with lived experience sharing that experience. Surely that counts for something?

"Videos produced by health care practitioners were more likely to be *accurate * [emphasis mine] compared to those by autistic creators and ‘other’ creators"

Yes, of course the actual autistic people would know less about how to address their daily issues than doctors /s

Still, anyone who created a tiktok on how to 'cure' autism can get fucked. That part I can agree with.

Tiktok is still probably a better source of information than most British doctors. Official diagnosis by an expert is obviously the gold standard but I would imagine self diagnosis remains the starting point for the majority of people.