The Pros and Cons of Self-Diagnosing Mental Health Issues

We’ve all been guilty of it. I’m sure you’ve seen the social media posts. You’ve probably even double-tapped a few of them. Whether you’re on TikTok, Instagram, or even Facebook or LinkedIn, you’ll find creators, coaches, or maybe just some girl you went to high school with sharing a super relatable post about that #ADHDLife. It’s not just ADHD either. There are accounts dedicated to depression, anxiety, trauma, and more. All this content can leave your head spinning, wondering who’s a real expert and who’s just some person online who said something relatable.

In today’s perpetually online world, it’s easier than ever to Google your symptoms, follow mental health influencers, and stumble upon diagnostic checklists on social media. While this growing access to information has opened a lot of doors that would have otherwise never been opened, it also comes with some real risks — especially when it leads people to self-diagnose mental health issues without professional input.

At Claibourne Counseling in Scottsdale, we believe that self-awareness is powerful, but self-labeling can be limiting. Let’s dive into both the positives and the potential negatives of self-diagnosing, and how you can use what you learn, either way, to take more intentional steps toward healing.

We want to start by saying that we believe self-diagnosis isn’t always a bad thing. It demonstrates a growing self-awareness and desire for self-

understanding. These are both critical first steps toward seeking help and healing, which is something every human on Earth could use these days, in whatever form you choose to find it.

We sat down with Claire Karakey, founder and clinical director here at Claibourne, to talk about some of the positives when it comes to self-diagnosing a mental health issue.

Increased Awareness

A lot of people are starting to recognize symptoms they might not have noticed or otherwise ignored in the past, thanks to more accessible information and relatable stories online. This increased awareness can be the first step toward improved lifestyle changes, better personal relationships and communication skills, and more.

Reduced Stigma

If you’ve been around here long enough, you might remember our blog on the History of Mental Health. It hasn’t always been something that’s talked about so freely, to say the least. We’ve come a long way. Seeing others talk openly about their mental health struggles fosters a culture of honesty and validation.

Empowerment

For people who have historically lacked access to care — especially those in marginalized communities — self-education and symptom checkers can be a way to reclaim agency over their well-being.

Bridging the Avoidance Gap

We’re writing this blog during June, Men’s Mental Health Month, so it’s worth noting that men are 4x more likely to die by suicide than women, underscoring the need to bridge the avoidance gap and break the silence about mental health struggles. Avoidance is often our default defense. Self-diagnosis can help men, and women alike, take the first step toward acknowledging something is wrong.

Validation of Lived Experience

Even without a formal diagnosis, many people find comfort in knowing they’re not alone. Self-diagnosing can be similar to personality testing like DiSC, the Enneagram, or Myers-Briggs. While these tests aren’t meant to clinically diagnose anyone, they’re still widely used by corporations for evaluating team members’ individual traits, motivations, and working styles. Identifying your personality type through these tests can be incredibly validating, similar to the sense of validation you might feel when sharing a possible mental health diagnosis with others.

Peer Communities

Online support groups can offer a sense of belonging and shared understanding (though they’re not without risks — more on that below). Likewise with the personality types, once you identify your type, it’s easy to join communities of like-minded individuals online to foster a sense of belonging.

Self-Knowledge as a Tool

When used responsibly, self-reflection can help you articulate what you’re going through, making your work with a licensed therapist more productive.

Now that we’ve covered the positives, let’s talk about the potential risks of self-diagnosing a mental health issue. While self-awareness is empowering, self-diagnosing without professional input can create more confusion than clarity if you’re not careful.

Here are a few of the risks that we talked about with Claire:

Misdiagnosis or Over-Diagnosis

Mental health conditions are complex. We’ll say this until we’re blue in the face, mental health care is health care. Just like any other health condition, many mental health conditions share overlapping symptoms or may exist alongside other issues (known as comorbidity).

Over-Pathologizing Normal Behavior

Life is hard. Life in 2025 is even harder. It can be easy to misinterpret everyday stress, personality quirks, or emotional ups and downs as something more serious, especially when we have “experts” in our faces multiple times a day, every day telling us, “You have <insert trend of the day>”.

Delaying Professional Help

If someone believes they’ve figured out “what’s wrong,” they may delay seeking an accurate diagnosis or treatment plan. In cases like borderline personality disorder or depression, this could literally cost lives.

Self-Medicating

In some cases, people may begin to treat their symptoms on their own, which can be dangerous without professional guidance. This could mean a student who saw on social media that they might have ADHD, so they took a friend’s Adderall but now they’re getting headaches every day because they didn’t understand the side effects. It could mean an executive who suffers from anxiety and heard that cannabis could help but doesn’t know the difference between Sativa and Indica, so now their anxiety is worse, and they can’t sleep at night. It’s possible that the student could have treated his ADHD without medication. Likewise, the cannabis could have been a complement to a therapist’s treatment of the executive’s anxiety, if used correctly. These medications aren’t inherently bad, but when being administered to treat a mental health condition, one should always seek professional guidance first as every human body is different.

Labeling and Limiting Beliefs

Identifying too strongly with a diagnosis can lead to self-limiting thoughts like, “I can’t do this because I have X.” We’ve heard stories of people who have joined support groups after self-diagnosing. These groups had them convinced that because of this ‘diagnosis’ they couldn’t or shouldn’t do this or that. This is the opposite goal of being diagnosed by a professional. The goal when you’re diagnosed by a mental health professional isn’t to eliminate all emotions — it’s to learn how to manage and respond to them in healthy ways.

We all know that social media can especially blur the line between truth and misinformation. It’s no different when it comes to mental health, except in this case, that truth comes at the cost of your own self-discovery. Social media algorithms often prioritize content that’s emotionally relatable, not necessarily 100% accurate.

At Claibourne Counseling, we don’t believe self-diagnosing is inherently harmful — but it should be approached with caution, curiosity, and the openness to seek professional input.

Self-diagnosis can serve as a great starting point — a way to build a dialogue around your experience. But the goal should be self-awareness, not self-labeling. A licensed therapist or clinician can help you explore what you’re noticing and guide you toward strategies that actually work for your life. A therapist can also help to identify the roots of our mental health issues. Did you experience early childhood trauma? Are you holding on to limiting beliefs? Maybe you just have a stressful job that you could use some coping mechanisms to better manage.

None of these are unsurmountable but they can all feel that way if you do it alone. Therapy offers modalities like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), EMDR, and more can be used to treat any number of mental health issues. You don’t have to go it alone.

Since ADHD and Autism are two of the trendiest topics on social media these days, we wanted to briefly touch on these topics.

We’ll cover Autism first because it’s not our area of expertise. So, we admittedly don’t have much to say about it. Here are our few notes on self-diagnosing ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder):

• Autism should always be diagnosed by a psychologist, psychiatrist, or medical doctor with training in neurodevelopmental conditions. A diagnosis usually requires a comprehensive evaluation — it’s not something that should come from a TikTok video or Instagram Reel.
• Online jokes like “everyone has a touch of the ’tism” may be meant to destigmatize, but they can also minimize the complexity and reality of autism spectrum disorder.

Remember that just because you exhibit traits of autism does not mean that you are on the spectrum. Only about 1 in 45 adults in the U.S. actually meets the clinical criteria for diagnosis of ASD.

We’re able to speak to the topic of ADHD a bit more. If you’ve been around here you know that Chas, our co-founder and Director of Operations, has been living with his ADHD diagnosis since 7^th grade and considers it to be a superpower. Here are a few things to note specifically about self-diagnosing ADHD:

• Yes, a licensed therapist can diagnose ADHD. Tools like the ASRS (Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale), CAARS (Conners’ Adult ADHD Rating Scale), and observer forms (completed by a partner or family member) are often used.
• Treatment depends on what you’re struggling with most. For example:
• Trouble organizing or prioritizing? → Talk therapy and skill-building.
• Hyperfocus or avoidance? → EMDR to identify emotional triggers.
• Emotional regulation or impulsivity? → DBT skills can be very effective.
• ADHD often overlaps with other challenges, like dissociation or trauma. Somatic therapy can help uncover what’s going on underneath the surface by exploring where and how you feel things in your body.
• Everyone has ADHD tendencies from time to time because we’re human and distraction is a normal and sometimes, a necessary part of survival. It’s when these symptoms happen more often than not and begin to have consequences in work/school/relationships that we begin to look into a diagnosis of ADHD.

ADHD is a brain development disorder and childhood trauma is also shown to affect brain formation. It is likely that ADHD is caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Genetics can play a role in your chances of getting ADHD in childhood or adulthood.

Self-diagnosing a mental health issue isn’t the worst thing that you can do. It’s not inherently harmful and there are even some positive outcomes that can stem from what you learn during your journey to self-diagnosis. That journey should be approached with curiosity, though. Don’t go into it thinking that you’re going to come out with a certain answer. Just like when we use Dr. Google to diagnose a cold, there are risks involved.

Mental health care is health care.

Be cautious, curious, and most of all, be willing to seek professional input. The goal should be self-awareness, not self-labeling.

If you’ve done the work and you feel like you may be ready to speak with a therapist about your diagnosis, we’re here in Scottsdale or online in all of Arizona. Reach out today.