Is it possible to develop symptoms without actually having an illness?
Hypochondria was once defined that way, along with some other stipulations. But since 2013, that definition has been broken into two different diagnoses, namely somatic symptom disorder and illness anxiety disorder.
When talking about developing symptoms without actually having an illness itself, it’s called somatic symptom disorder. In today’s social media-saturated world, illness has found a new and quicker way to spread.
Over the course of a few months, several young women went to see a doctor in Texas with an oddly identical facial tic. Their only connection: a video on TikTok.
The TikTok watched by each girl was meant to inform audiences about Tourette syndrome and featured this particular facial tic as a symptom of the disease — the same facial tic experienced by each of the girls.
The Wall Street Journal said this event didn’t just happen in Texas, but quickly became a global occurrence in October 2021.
The same thing can happen with other conditions, including mental illness.
Influencers can advance misinformation
Avery Holton, who has researched health constructs and social media and chairs the Department of Communication at the University of Utah, said mental illness “is very real. These aren’t things that should be dismissed, but that should be engaged in conversation.”
Health professionals’ strong push to destigmatize the term “mental illness” is making resources more accessible online and opening space for conversations about mental health. With the new social media platform TikTok, videos that can be shared by the public at large have joined the crusade.
“People feel some agency to share their stories: They can create reels, they can create timeline stories, they can create entirely new personas that are all about one particular mental health topic. We’ve seen that for a long time in social media,” said Holton.
But TikTok, he said, has opened a new way to share that spreads at a rate never encountered before. This speed lets videos become viral in a matter of hours or minutes.
With the rapidly moving reels and TikToks, mental illness is a trending topic. However, people aren’t only sharing their stories, but sharing generalized symptoms that could be causing harm to viewers.
Jenny Howe, a Utah psychologist specializing in depression and anxiety in youth and children, said that as people have begun sharing more about mental illness online, the stigma has been reduced, but that “every technological advance comes with side effects.”
The side effect Howe referred to is the fact that untrained mental health coaches, influencers or others who have no certification — what she called “pseudo professionals” — can easily share misinformation about mental illness.
“There is absolutely zero training and people who have limited resources look at this material as being true and that can be really harmful,” she said.
Social media is creating a new challenge that says there’s a one-size-fits-all list of generic symptoms for mental illnesses. Howe said that mental illnesses are actually extremely personalized and differ from person to person.
In truth, though, it’s not all the influencers’ fault. The general population is prepared to listen to new voices but isn’t prepared to take their word for what it’s actually worth: a personal viewpoint, rather than a professional diagnosis.
“If you’re creating content, you have to be as transparent as you can,” said Holton. “There’s a huge responsibility as a content producer, and there’s also a challenge for the receiver to understand what they’re looking at.”
Age of dis- and misinformation
Anyone online — creator and viewer alike — has a responsibility to stop the spread of misinformation, Holton said.
Misinformation is any false information, whether it was intended or not.
He suggested that if you’re unsure if the story is true, you should check the facts by comparing them with other reliable resources before sharing. If you don’t want to spend the time to fact-check, it’s better not to share it at all.
We live in an age of disinformation, misinformation and propaganda, and people are very likely to encounter those online.
Holton said that human brains can become more vulnerable to misinformation when individuals are under stress, as the COVID-19 pandemic showed. Stress makes thinking particularly susceptible to nudges and suggestions from the media people consume.
On top of that, if people see incorrect information online more than once, they are twice as likely to believe it.
Algorithms complicate this because if someone has interacted with the content before —even if it’s not correct — they are bound to see it over and over again.
The odds are stacked against the media consumer.
Algorithms over-pathologize mental illness
Those who interact and show interest in symptoms of depression online will continue to see more videos on symptoms of depression. That’s how the algorithm is designed.
It leads to a phenomenon Howe referred to as “confirmation bias.”
“Our brains are really good at spotlighting the things that we have a bias towards looking for,” said Howe. “When we see a series of symptoms presented and we identify with a symptom, our brain is then going to work really hard to confirm that bias to be true.”
She said this happens a lot, especially with those who are diagnosed with anxiety.
“Our body and brain are not separate entities; they work together,” she said. “So when we are looking for something to be real in our body, it often presents itself.”
Another common mistake is called “attribution error.” An example of attribution error is wrongly attributing a symptom or everyday feeling to a mental illness, rather than a momentary occurrence.
“They start to attribute those symptoms to fundamentally wrong things in their environment, like ‘I have depression,’ rather than looking at it as ‘I’m tired because I was on my phone until 2 a.m.,’” said Howe.
Confirmation bias and attribution error both contribute to false self-diagnosis and it’s something that bothers therapists a lot.
“I validate that they have some symptoms that may make them feel like they’re struggling, but I would emphasize the fact that we are going to work together, to not minimize the symptoms, but how to manage life with anxiety as a passenger in your life, rather than something that needs to be fixed,” said Howe.
Stop self-diagnosing
Resources online including videos portraying generic mental health symptoms far outnumber high-quality resources such as sites like that of the American Psychological Association, but people should seek out those better sources. The symptom checker at Child Mind Institute states a powerful reminder for everyone searching online for symptoms.
“This tool is not a substitute for a diagnostic evaluation by a medical or mental health professional. If you believe your child has a psychiatric or learning disorder, please consult a professional.”
With an oversaturation of mediocre and unprofessional voices all chiming in on an important, even life-changing topic, self-diagnosing is on the rise, but mental health professionals definitely don’t recommend self-diagnosis.
Social media attempts to create a “one-size-fits-all” solution to mental illnesses. But that’s not the reality. Mental health professionals treat people with very different challenges and strengths that respond to and are helped by different approaches and tools.
When it comes to mental health, a professional’s evaluation matters, these experts told the Deseret News.
Addressing symptoms
None of this means we should treat mental illness as a figment of someone’s imagination. Both Holton and Howe warned against condemning, rather than openly listening when someone voices a concern about their mental health.
“Don’t talk at them about social media. ...” said Holton. “We have to start as parents, as brothers, as sisters, as friends and as family. We have to give each other room to talk about what we encounter in social media spaces.”
Humans have about 40,000 automatic thoughts a day. Our ability to take a step back and analyze what we think about is an ability that makes us uniquely human, Howe said.
The average person feels tired, hungry, happy, jumpy and scared at any given moment throughout the day because we are capable of feeling all of these emotions. They’re all completely normal.
What social media has taken away is the ability to feel these emotions for what they are, without fear that they signal mental illness.
“The key to managing the side-effects of over-pathologizing, this attachment to mental illness that is happening on social media, is talking about it,” Howe said.
Social media shows a very small part of someone’s life. As humans, Howe said, we need to gather the information we receive and use critical-thinking skills to respond appropriately to that stimuli.
She emphasizes that “our thoughts are not our truths,” because we get to decide how we react to those thoughts.
The next time you feel tired and you think about that video you watched yesterday that listed the symptoms of depression, don’t let your brain make that unconscious jump. Take a moment to think about other potential causes and then choose how to respond, she said.