Dangers of Self Diagnosis

I think it’s fair to say most mental health professionals have experienced the moment when you get your first DSM (Diagnostic And Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and you immediately think you have several disorders of your own. This largely the same effect as people looking online to try to diagnose themselves.

An important aspect to note is in the DSM, the symptoms are written to seem highly general; ex: “excessive worry more days than not for 6 months; difficulty controlling the worry; being fatigued, irritable, sleep disturbance.” Many of us have experienced times of great stress in our lives and may be led to think we need anxiety medication if we see that these are symptoms of Generalized Anxiety Disorder. However, you may be forgetting that there are other qualifiers for this. Each symptom listed for each Diagnosis must be clinically significant. This means your sleep must be noticeably disturbed (were you sleeping 9 hours all your life and now you are getting 4 and it’s broken up?). Are you so irritable that you are getting written up at work or fights outside of work? Is the worry occupying your every thought and making it impossible to do daily tasks such as reading, order at restaurants, or have basic conversations with others? Again, all of this must have been present for 6 full months or longer and cannot be better explained by another diagnosis.

This last sentence is an important one to note and again where clinical knowledge of a professional is essential. Perhaps you are convinced you have anxiety but in fact you have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Perhaps there is a medical condition or drug use occurring. In any case, you are going to want a mental health professional monitoring these symptoms. We, as counselors or psychologists, are constantly on the lookout for new symptoms exhibited by our clients. Even a Master’s level counselor must go through 6 or 7 years of training before they can have their first counseling session. There is an abundance of information to learn in the field so to try to take a shortcut and diagnose online in five minutes, there will be a great deal of information not taken into account.

So where can this lead you? Well in statistics, we use the terms Alpha and Beta error. An Alpha error is when there is a false positive, meaning you think something is true but it’s not. As you can see this would be bad since you could potentially spend a great deal of time and resources attempting to fix this problem that doesn’t exist. However, far worse is a Beta error. This means that there is a false negative. For instance, if you incorrectly rule out that you have Bipolar Disorder and attribute your behavior to something else, suddenly you are in a situation where you likely need medication but will never seek it out (and therefore continuously put yourself in potentially harmful situations). The risk of these errors is quite minimal if you see a mental health professional.

As seen above, much can go wrong with misdiagnosing and there are surely many factors to consider. Next time you find yourself looking online or elsewhere for what’s wrong with you, I encourage you to at least validate your estimate by taking the time to see a counselor or psychologist. It may be inconvenient for your schedule, but it is probably more convenient than continuing to suffer with whatever the issue is.

Disclaimer: This blog does not provide or replace psychological treatment or evaluation. Contact a psychologist in your community if you are in need of individualized services.

Written by Derek Brogdon, LPC