How ADHD awareness could lead to a false self-diagnosis
Increased awareness and education about ADHD may lead to inaccurate self-diagnosis among young people, a new study has claimed.
Researchers from the University of Toronto say that while education is crucial, it can also fuel the mistaken belief that common problems faced by young adults, such as fatigue and irritability, are symptoms of ADHD.
Dasha Sandra, the study’s lead author, said young people shouldn’t be discouraged from seeking help, but she believes mental health education needs to improve to include more context around symptoms.
She said: “Believing you have a disorder can help you make sense of confusing or complex experiences that are actually completely normal. This may be especially true for young adults.”
“Self-diagnosis can prevent a person from making an accurate diagnosis or addressing real challenges in their life. It can also divert scarce resources away from people who need help due to an underlying neurodevelopmental condition that requires appropriate evaluation.”
The study was tested on 215 young adults who did not meet clinical criteria for ADHD and had not previously been diagnosed with ADHD.
Some participants were assigned to attend a workshop on ADHD. Others were assigned to a workshop on ADHD, which included a lesson on the ‘nocebo effect’, in which negative expectations about having a disorder can make a person’s symptoms worse.
The lecture on the nocebo effect explained that not only symptoms of ADHD but also problems such as irritability, fatigue and lack of concentration are normal among teenagers.
A control group also attended a workshop to learn about sleep.
Researchers found that those who received ADHD awareness information had a stronger belief that they had ADHD. The number of people scoring high on self-diagnosis increased from 30 percent to 60 percent immediately after the lecture and remained at 50 percent a week later.
For participants who also received the nocebo training intervention, false self-diagnosis rates were halved and completely eliminated after one week.
Ms Sandra said: “We’re not saying mental health awareness is always bad. The positive benefits are well documented. It’s a matter of how much awareness there needs to be and what kind of awareness people need to have.”
“We wanted to determine whether awareness efforts had negative effects and find a way to raise awareness in a more balanced way so people could learn without risk of unintended harm.”
There are currently around 2.6 million people with ADHD in the UK. The NHS said up to 20,000 people were newly referred for ADHD assessment in March, a 13.5 per cent increase on the previous year.
“It has been documented that there is currently an overdiagnosis of ADHD. At the same time, awareness is growing that ADHD is underdiagnosed in some populations, particularly in women and adults,” Ms Sandra said.
