r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 16d ago

Neuroscience 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.

https://news.ubc.ca/2025/03/adhd-misinformation-on-tiktok/
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u/WingsofRain 16d ago

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.

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u/Veil-of-Fire 16d ago

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.

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u/WingsofRain 16d ago

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

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u/cskelly2 14d ago

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%

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u/PeaceCertain2929 16d ago

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…”,

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u/WingsofRain 16d ago

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?