ADHD misinformation on TikTok is shaping young adults’ perceptions. An analysis of the 100 most-viewed TikTok videos related to ADHD revealed that fewer than half the claims about symptoms actually align with clinical guidelines for diagnosing ADHD.

[u/mvea]

https://news.ubc.ca/2025/03/adhd-misinformation-on-tiktok/

[u/jackofslayers]

DiD is a really bad one when it comes to misinfo online

[u/VioletyCrazy → u/jackofslayers]

One of my favorite musicians has DID, and some of the fandom has some weird brainrot regarding it. Some watch his every move and speculate if he is switching or dipping in a clip and who is in control since he publicly named one of his alters. It’s like they’re dissecting an adored lab rat. Though TBF the additional infantilation of him, I’m not sure if it’s due to his condition or because Oppar status, but it’s a bit weird.

[u/WingsofRain → u/jackofslayers]

Agreed, there are so many people (especially kids) claiming to have DiD these days when in reality it’s an incredibly rare disorder…like around 1% of the world’s population?

[u/dpdxguy → u/WingsofRain]

around 1% of the world’s population?

That high?

My ex-wife had childhood trauma induced DID. But I've never met another person who credibly claimed to have it. And I wouldn't have believed she did except for the overwhelming symptoms she exhibited before I took her to see a psychologist upon the advice of her neurologist.

[u/WingsofRain → u/dpdxguy]

That’s what this%20is,assessments%20for%20an%20accurate%20diagnosis) article from 2023 says. Like it says in the article, it wouldn’t surprise me if people were either misdiagnosed or going undiagnosed because even though there’s been a lot of progress over the years, there’s still a lot of stigma around mental illnesses…kinda on topic for this post if you think about it.

[u/Veil-of-Fire → u/WingsofRain]

It took me a while, but I tracked down the study that number comes from (the linked study just quoted it, they didn't derive it). It was a deep rabbit hole. That study linked to a 2022 study, which took the number from a 2011 study, which took the number from a 2007 study, which finally led back to the study the number comes from, conducted in 2004 and published in 2006.

This one: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022395605000385?via%3Dihub

The number was 1.5% in their study, which only included families from upstate New York.

The present findings are based on data from a representative sample of 658 individuals from upstate New York who completed comprehensive psychosocial and psychiatric interviews in 2001–2004 (mean age 33.1; SD = 2.9), and in a series of previous interviews conducted with themselves and their mothers during adolescence and early adulthood.

[u/WingsofRain → u/Veil-of-Fire]

I’ve been on an airplane on and off almost all day today so I appreciate you doing the digging!

[u/cskelly2 → u/Veil-of-Fire]

My fav part about this is it’s reflective of a specific psychiatric population and not gen pop but gets cited as gen pop. The real number is probably something around .04%

[u/PeaceCertain2929 → u/WingsofRain]

Interesting that it says “Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is a psychiatric disorder diagnosed in about 1.5% of the global population. This disorder is often misdiagnosed…”,

[u/WingsofRain → u/PeaceCertain2929]

I think by that wording, they meant that it’s misdiagnosed as other DSM mental illnesses. Kinda like how people with ADHD might be misdiagnosed with Anxiety or Depressive disorders first since there’s a bit of overlap and comorbidity. It could possibly by a misdiagnosis in the other direction, of course, where another mental illness is being mistaken for DiD, but I think that due to the nature of the study they might be more likely talking about the former?

[u/CyanideKitty → u/dpdxguy]

I briefly dated a guy with trauma induced DID. He had already been diagnosed when we got together but it seemed some of the symptoms were managed by some of the medications for some of his other mental health issues. I can only imagine that knowing you were getting involved with someone with DID is vastly different than your experience, it being completely unknown. Like you, he's the only actual credible/diagnosed person I've met with it. It will be incredibly difficult for me to ever believe anyone who is self diagnosing, as the self-diagnosed that I've met were all very different from him.

Even knowing that it's just for attention and to be "quirky", I have a hard time understanding why someone would want to pretend to have something like DID. For the very rare few that have it, it can be a terrifying nightmare to deal with, even with diagnosis and treatment. Thank you for getting your ex-wife the help and I hope she's managing it as well as she can be.

[u/thjuicebox → u/dpdxguy]

Not contradicting you but just sharing:

Sometimes trauma can also induce Secondary Structural Dissociation which doesn’t meet the criteria for a DID diagnosis, but has overlapping components

The DID research website has published some writing about secondary structural dissociation

I found it while trying to understand myself because I experience significant memory lapses and behaved in very contradictory ways that I couldn’t really understand myself either, but didn’t tick other boxes for DID.

Following this I started therapy with a professional who was experienced in using schema/IFS — therapy approaches that address the splitting of self that occurs with trauma, even if it’s not diagnosable as DID

[u/Veil-of-Fire → u/WingsofRain]

Not even that.

If it were 1% globally, there would be 5x more DID sufferers in the world than there are Jews.

[u/Suyefuji → u/WingsofRain]

Then there's me, with cPTSD and what my psychologist stubbornly insists on calling DDNOS because DID is a bad word and she refuses to diagnose it. Like refusing to say the words will magically unite all of my headmates and fix my woefully irregular memory issues.

[u/EllipticPeach → u/jackofslayers]

I work with kids and so many of them claim to have DID when to my knowledge it’s not something you can have until you’re into adulthood??