r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 17d 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/sad_pawn 16d ago

Can I ask how/where do you do it? Online, individual practice/clients, other places like schools, etc? I'm curious where you encounter it.

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u/cskelly2 16d ago

I co-own a private practice. I’ve worked in public mental health outpatient facilities and residential treatment facilities as well and seen it there, though surprisingly(to me) less frequently than I do now in PP. Unfortunately it’s not just clients that I hear it from. I also see a fair number of predominantly masters level clinicians echoing some pretty pseudoscientific and extremely generalized diagnostic criteria. To give an example, a clinician I spoke to today stated a “red flag” for ADHD is when a person walks into a room and forgets why they were there. This is a pretty common experience for most people, has a well documented cognitive process behind it, and is definitely not part of the diagnostic criteria. This is not to say masters level clinicians aren’t capable as a group or shouldn’t diagnose, just an observation I’ve had. I know some great counselors and social workers!

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u/sad_pawn 16d ago

That's very interesting, actually. Thank you for your response. I wonder, especially for clinicians, what's the chain of the misinformation. Aka is it directly from tik-tok, mouth to mouth, other online spaces/forums, patients, etc. Also, is it a recent phenomenon? In my understanding ADHD had been misunderstood a lot even before the current push and the diagnostic criteria has changed pretty significantly. I wonder if part of the problem also is that there never been good public understanding of the disorder, and the clinical understanding has shifted a lot as well.

Also with clients, is it more on the side of self-diagnosis based on the misinformation? Is it mostly younger people?

Sorry for all the questions, obviously no pressure to answer or give any details. It's just interesting to see perspective of someone from within the industry.

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u/cskelly2 16d ago

No worries! Happy to give my .02 on this. To your question about origin I would hypothesize it’s a mixture of all of them. I personally think that there is a large push for content from clinicians to better their SEO which, much like cable news, makes a mad rush for new and exciting stuff. Infographics show up so often in local therapist groups as marketing material. These infographics are often extremely vague or generalized.

To your question regarding novelty, I would say it’s not new, just worse. There were always misunderstandings of psychiatric disorders like “I’m a little ocd, I like things neat” or “that person is bipolar. They are so moody!”

With clients I will say younger gen’s tend to do it more but it’s not exclusive. There is also a push back for correcting misinformation for fear of losing clients that I believe reinforces it. I’ve had clients fire me for giving them an assessment of which they didn’t like the result. Which is fine, but I could see why many clinicians would be reticent to give psychoeducation in those moments

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u/cskelly2 16d ago

I will add that all of that is speculative on my part so take it as a theory