Adolescents' Self-Diagnosis of Mental Disorders: A Qualitative Study of Clinicians' Perspectives

Background: Concerns over self-diagnosis of mental disorders amongst adolescents have been increasing, but very little empirical research exists to understand what clinicians think about this phenomenon or how it might impact psychological therapy.Method: Semi-structured one-to-one interviews were conducted with 16 mental health professionals, exploring their experiences with and attitudes towards self-diagnosis of mental disorders in adolescents. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Results: Five themes were generated. The first two focused on factors contributing to the rise in self-diagnosis: (1) Self-diagnosis stems from an inherent need to be understood and (2) Access to diagnostic language has proliferated. The latter three focused on the impact of self-diagnosis on therapy: (3) Self-diagnosis is meaningful therapeutic material; (4) When adolescents feel validated, self-diagnosis often fades over time; and (5) Self-diagnosis becomes a barrier to change when it is inflexible.Discussion: The study indicates that, in most cases, clinicians do not consider self-diagnosis as problematic and report it can sometimes help understand the adolescent’s concerns. However, our study also supports concerns about harm to the individual when self-diagnosis is inflexible, and how self-diagnosis could be harmful on a population level if it trivialises psychiatric language and suffering. These findings suggest the need for careful management of self-diagnosis in clinical settings and addressing public discourse that promotes self-diagnosis.