In Which Charlie Has An Opinion

#12: Self Diagnosis

As a person with numerous mental illnesses, there aren't many things that piss me off more than the subject of this rant: confused teens who read a little bit about a mental illness and then decide they have it.

I have had to sit through grueling neuropsych evaluations, which is basically when I take a a few whole days off from everything to sit in an office with a neuropsychologist and take a shit ton of tests. At the end of that, the neuropsychologist takes about six months to write a report about how fucked up I am, and in the meantime calls my parents to tell them what exactly is wrong with me. I have waited for hours, days, even weeks in hospitals being monitored for "safety". I have been to the dark side multiple times. There were no cookies.

My point is, the road to diagnosis is long and unpaved. And it pisses me off to no end to see people who claim to have ridden a hovercraft down it by self-diagnosing.

There's a really good One Direction fanfic on this site called "i sleep naked." (OMGZ IT'S A GOOD ONE DIRECTION FANFIC! THE WORLD IS GONNA END OMGZZZ) It's a Larry Stylinson fic where Louis has a personality disorder and Harry has Asperger's. While the story is fucking incredible, I had to stop reading because the comments drove me up a wall. Girls who read Harry's story decided about a few chapters in that they had this disorder. News flash: You don't! You are NOT qualified to diagnose yourself with Asperger's. I didn't even believe I had it until I was tested. Just because you share some traits with a fictional form of your favorite pop star does not mean you're mentally ill.

Even when Kevin described some of the symptoms of Asperger's in one of his rants, people commented saying they experienced those symptoms. Another person commented stating the truth: Just because you experience some of the symptoms does not automatically mean you have it. Extreme anxiety in social situations is a common symptom of Asperger's, but it might just be social anxiety. How do you know the difference?

I feel like I'm starting to beat a dead horse here, so I guess I'll conclude/shut the fuck up. The point: Only a psychologist can diagnose you. They spent years studying this shit. They ARE this shit. You can't just read something about autism and diagnose yourself with it. It doesn't work that way.