> There is a weird trend toward over-diagnosing common life struggles as major clinical health issues requiring intervention. I think this comes from a place of

> There is a weird trend toward over-diagnosing common life struggles as major clinical health issues requiring intervention. I think this comes from a place of good intentions, where people don’t want to miss anyone who might have a major mental health issue that will benefit from treatment. However, over-diagnosing mental health conditions and convincing kids they even common struggles are actually mental health issues that require advanced treatment techniques has the opposite effect of amplifying common struggles into something much bigger. My subjective unprofessional opinion is that this tendency is also an over-compensation in trying to destigmatize mental illness, and to treat mental illness as illness and sufferers thereof as victims, rather than blaming them for lacking motivation or whatever unempathetic BS people used to think. Hopefully this is a short-lived trend and things will balance somewhere a little more sensible. > There’s a secondary phenomenon in some demographics wherein having a mental health diagnosis is perceived as providing some social advantage, Mental illness had some degree of social gravity (not necessarily clout or advantage) when I was a teenager back in the "emo" and "scene" days of the 00s. The phenomenon has clearly evolved somewhat, but I don't think it's entirely new. What is new is its reach.