"Guess I'm not alone": A qualitative exploration of ADHD, mental health, and self-diagnosis comment sections on TikTok

Katie Saunders; Mariel Marcano-Olivier; Josephine Cornell; Athfah Akhtar

doi:10.29329/jsomer.108

Authors

Katie Rose Saunders Keele University, United Kingdom https://orcid.org/0009-0002-3344-9720
Mariel Marcano-Olivier Birmingham City University, United Kingdom https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4091-8185
Josephine Cornell Birmingham City University, United Kingdom https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0933-9030
Athfah Akhtar Birmingham City University, United Kingdom https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1073-3895

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29329/jsomer.108

Keywords:

Social Media, TikTok, Mental Health, self-diagnosis, ADHD

Abstract

Frank discussions of mental health have been observed on social media consistently over decades. The TikTok app ‘pushes’ algorithmically curated video content onto users’ ‘For You Page’; anecdotal evidence and early research indicates that TikTok has influenced discussions of mental health and ADHD, resulting in long NHS waiting lists and a culture of online self-diagnosis. The present study explores how mental health content is discussed by social media users in TikTok comment sections, analysing how people interact with mental health content (and ADHD) online, including perceptions of, and motivations for, self-diagnosis. The TikTok API (the application software for TikTok) was used to source secondary data. An Inductive thematic analysis was conducted on comment sections of videos using the tags #Mentalhealth, #Depression, #Anixety, #Selfdiagnosis, and #ADHD. The analysis generated 6 themes: (1) showing support and empathy towards posters; (2) relatability of content, personal declarations, and experience coherence; (3) indirect and direct cries for help; (4) affirming those that self-diagnose; (5) motivations for avoiding formal diagnosis; (6) negative perceptions of online self-diagnosis. Social media users engaged with the content in a positive way and, whilst self-diagnosis yielded mixed opinions, motivations for self-diagnosis were discussed such as distrust of mental health professionals and perceived stigma. Mental Health content exposure on TikTok can yield positive outcomes, but users should exercise caution when applying relatable content to themselves. Self-diagnosis remains controversial, and future research may elucidate barriers to formal diagnosis which prompt online self-diagnosis.

Author Biographies

Katie Rose Saunders, Keele University, United Kingdom

Dr Katie Saunders is a Research Associate within the School of Medicine at Keele University, and an Honorary Research Associate at Midlands Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust. Her research interests include, social media, neurodivergence, health inequalities, and improving research capacity and access to support for underserved populations.

Mariel Marcano-Olivier, Birmingham City University, United Kingdom

Dr Mariel Ines Marcano-Olivier is a Senior Lecturer in the College of Psychology at Birmingham City University. Their work explores social communication, particularly within social media communities, and equality and diversity in Higher Education.

Josephine Cornell, Birmingham City University, United Kingdom

Dr Josephine Cornell is a Lecturer in the College of Psychology at Birmingham City University. Her work is situated within social and community psychology, and her research interests include issues of identity and inequality.

Athfah Akhtar, Birmingham City University, United Kingdom

Dr Athfah Akhtar is an Associate Professor in the department of Psychology and Counselling at Birmingham City University. Her areas of interest include cross-cultural interventions within mental health services, acceptability and usability of mental health interventions and social media and mental health.

References

ADHD UK (2023). NHS ADHD assessments waiting lists report. Available at: https://adhduk.co.uk/nhs-adhd-assessments-waiting-lists-report/ (Accessed: 30 August 2024).

Ahmed, A., & Samuel, S. (2017). Self-diagnosis in psychology students. The International Journal of Indian Psychology, 4(2), 86. https://doi.org/10.25215/0402.035

Akhmedova, A., Sutcliffe, J., Greenhow, C., Fisher, M. H., & Sung, C. (2024). Social media use among neurodivergent college students: Benefits, harms and implications for education. Information and Learning Sciences, 125(10), 850–876. https://doi.org/10.1108/ILS-01-2024-0005

Alper, M., Rauchberg, J. S., Simpson, E., Guberman, J., & Feinberg, S. (2025). TikTok as algorithmically mediated biographical illumination: Autism, self-discovery, and platformed diagnosis on# autisktok. New Media & Society, 14614448231193091 https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444823119309

Anderer, S. (2024). Patients are turning to TikTok for health information—here’s what clinicians need to know. Jama, 331(15), 1262-1264. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2024.1280

Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs.

Basch, C. H., Donelle, L., Fera, J., & Jaime, C. (2022). Deconstructing TikTok videos on mental health: cross-sectional, descriptive content analysis. JMIR Formative Research, 6(5), e38340. https://doi.org/10.2196/38340

Boero, N., & Pascoe, C. J. (2012). Pro-anorexia communities and online interaction: Bringing the pro-ana body online. Body & Society, 18(2), 27-57. https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X12440827

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77-101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2021a). Can I use TA? Should I use TA? Should I not use TA? Comparing reflexive thematic analysis and other pattern‐based qualitative analytic approaches. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 21(1), 37-47. https://doi.org/10.1002/capr.12360

Buehler, E. M. (2017). “You Shouldn’t Use Facebook for That”: Navigating Norm Violations While Seeking Emotional Support on Facebook. Social Media + Society, 3(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305117733225

Clark, A. (2023). Social Media and Mental Illness Identity Formation: The Role of Community Culture and Misinformation (Master's thesis, The George Washington University)

Corzine, A., & Roy, A. (2024). Inside the black mirror: current perspectives on the role of social media in mental illness self-diagnosis. Discover Psychology, 4(1), 40. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44202-024-00152-3

Cunningham, J. M., & Feldman, M. D. (2011). Munchausen by Internet: current perspectives and three new cases. Psychosomatics, 52(2), 185-189. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psym.2010.11.005

Dell’Osso, L., & Carpita, B. (2023). What misdiagnoses do women with autism spectrum disorder receive in the DSM-5?. CNS spectrums, 28(3), 269-270. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1092852922000037

Foulkes, L., & Andrews, J. L. (2023). Are mental health awareness efforts contributing to the rise in reported mental health problems? A call to test the prevalence inflation hypothesis. New Ideas in Psychology, 69, 101010. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2023.101010

Franzke, A. S., Bechmann, A., Zimmer, M., Ess, C. M., & the Association of Internet Researchers. (2020). Internet Research: Ethical Guidelines 3.0. Association of Internet Researchers. https://aoir.org/reports/ethics3.pdf

Gallagher, L. (2022, January 14). Welcome to AnxietyTok: An empirical review of peer support for individuals living with mental illness on social networking site TikTok. Veritas: Villanova Research Journal, 3 (1). https://doi.org/10.61372/vvrj.v3i1.2641

Giles, D. C., & Newbold, J. (2011). Self-and other-diagnosis in user-led mental health online communities. Qualitative Health Research, 21(3), 419-428. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732310381388

Gilmore, R., Beezhold, J., Selwyn, V., Howard, R., Bartolome, I., & Henderson, N. (2022). Is TikTok increasing the number of self-diagnoses of ADHD in young people?. European Psychiatry, 65(S1), S571-S571. https://doi.org/10.1192/j.eurpsy.2022.1463

Grant, A., Turner, S., Shaw, S. C., Williams, K., Morgan, H., Ellis, R., & Brown, A. (2024). “I am afraid of being treated badly if I show it”: A cross-sectional study of healthcare accessibility and Autism Health Passports among UK Autistic adults. PLoS One, 19(5), e0303873. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303873

Griffith, F. J., & Stein, C. H. (2021). Behind the hashtag: Online disclosure of mental illness and community response on Tumblr. American Journal of Community Psychology, 67(3-4), 419-432. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajcp.12483

Gupta, A., Gupta, D., Chaudhary, P., Raje, P., & Chandiramani, K. (2021). Exploring trivialisation of mental health issues using internet memes in young adults. The International Journal of Indian Psychology , 868-81. https://doi.org/10.25215/0902.091

Gupta, R., & Ariefdjohan, M. (2021). Mental illness on Instagram: a mixed method study to characterize public content, sentiments, and trends of antidepressant use. Journal of Mental Health, 30(4), 518-525. https://doi.org/10.1080/09638237.2020.1755021

Hardman Taylor, S., & Chen, Y. A. (2024). The lonely algorithm problem: The relationship between algorithmic personalization and social connectedness on TikTok. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 29(5). https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmae017

Hasan, F., Foster, M. M., & Cho, H. (2023). Normalizing Anxiety on Social Media Increases Self-Diagnosis of Anxiety: The Mediating Effect of Identification (But Not Stigma). Journal of Health Communication, 28(9), 563–572. https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2023.2235563

Herrick, S. S., Hallward, L., & Duncan, L. R. (2021). “This is just how I cope”: An inductive thematic analysis of eating disorder recovery content created and shared on TikTok using# EDrecovery. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 54(4), 516-526. https://doi.org/10.1002/eat.23463

Holmes, M. (2025, January). If So Many People Have ADHD, Is It Really A Disorder? HuffPost. https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/adhd-common-really-a-disorder_l_6797bee0e4b0792017b783f4

Issaka, B., Aidoo, E. A. K., Wood, S. F., & Mohammed, F. (2024). “Anxiety is not cute” analysis of twitter users’ discourses on romanticizing mental illness. BMC Psychiatry, 24(1), 221. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-024-05663-w

Iversen, S., & Kildahl, A. N. (2022). Case report: mechanisms in misdiagnosis of autism as borderline personality disorder. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 735205. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.735205

Kim, M., Saha, K., De Choudhury, M., & Choi, D. (2023). Supporters first: understanding online social support on mental health from a supporter perspective. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 7(CSCW1), 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1145/3579525

Kourkoulou, A. E. (2023). TikTalk: The effects of mental health content on TikTok users. Retrieved from https://sphere.acg.edu/jspui/handle/123456789/2428, on 20th November, 2025.

Lawlor, A., & Kirakowski, J. (2017). Claiming someone else's pain: A grounded theory analysis of online community participants experiences of Munchausen by Internet. Computers in Human Behavior, 74, 101-111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.03.070

Lewis, L. F. (2016). Exploring the experience of self-diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder in adults. Archives of Psychiatric Nursing, 30(5), 575-580. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apnu.2016.03.009

Lorenzo-Luaces, L., Dierckman, C., & Adams, S. (2023). Attitudes and (mis) information about cognitive behavioral therapy on TikTok: an analysis of video content. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 25, e45571. https://doi.org/10.2196/45571

McDonagh, M. (2025, March). I'm sorry, but ADHD has become a scam that is wildly overdiagnosed and an excuse for poor behaviour. The Standard. https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/adhd-london-diagnosis-pip-social-media-b1216208.html

McQuaid, G. A., Strang, J. F., & Jack, A. (2024). Borderline personality as a factor in late, missed, and mis-diagnosis in autistic girls and women: a conceptual analysis. Autism in Adulthood, 6(4), 401-427. https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2023.0034

Milton, A., Ajmani, L., DeVito, M. A., & Chancellor, S. (2023, April). “I See Me Here”: Mental Health Content, Community, and Algorithmic Curation on TikTok. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1-17). https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581489

Müller-Vahl, K. R., Pisarenko, A., Jakubovski, E., & Fremer, C. (2022). Stop that! It’s not Tourette’s but a new type of mass sociogenic illness. Brain, 145 (2), 476-480 https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awab316

Munro, E., Wells, G., Paciente, R., Wickens, N., Ta, D., Mandzufas, J., Lombardi, K., & Woolard, A. (2024). Diet culture on TikTok: a descriptive content analysis. Public Health Nutrition, 27(1), e169. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1368980024001381

Naslund, J. A., Grande, S. W., Aschbrenner, K. A., & Elwyn, G. (2014). Naturally occurring peer support through social media: the experiences of individuals with severe mental illness using YouTube. PLOS One, 9(10), e110171. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0110171

Ndour, A., & Foulkes, L. (2025). The romanticisation of mental health problems in adolescents and its implications: a narrative review. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 1-30. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-025-02701-0

Nicolaidis, C., Raymaker, D. M., Ashkenazy, E., McDonald, K. E., Dern, S., Baggs, A. E., Kapp, S, K., Weiner, M. N., & Boisclair, W. C. (2015). “Respect the way I need to communicate with you”: Healthcare experiences of adults on the autism spectrum. Autism, 19(7), 824-831. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361315576221

Pavlova, A., & Berkers, P. (2022). “Mental health” as defined by Twitter: Frames, emotions, stigma. Health Communication, 37(5), 637-647. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2020.1862396

Philipsen, A. (2006). Differential diagnosis and comorbidity of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and borderline personality disorder (BPD) in adults. European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 256, i42-i46. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00406-006-1006-2

Picco, L., Abdin, E., Chong, S. A., Pang, S., Shafie, S., Chua, B. Y., Vaingankar, J. A., Ong, L. P., Tay, J., & Subramaniam, M. (2016). Attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help: Factor structure and socio-demographic predictors. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 182091. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00547

Prescott, J., Rathbone, A. L., & Brown, G. (2020). Online peer to peer support: Qualitative analysis of UK and US open mental health Facebook groups. Digital Health, 6, 2055207620979209. https://doi.org/10.1177/2055207620979209

Pringsheim, T., Ganos, C., McGuire, J. F., Hedderly, T., Woods, D., Gilbert, D. L., Piacentini, J., Dale, R, C., & Martino, D. (2021). Rapid onset functional tic‐like behaviors in young females during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Movement Disorders, 36(12), 2707. https://doi.org/10.1002/mds.28778

Requena, S. S., Pirkis, J., Currier, D., Conway, M., Lee, S., Turnure, J., Cummins. J., & Nicholas, A. (2023). An evaluation of the boys do cry suicide prevention media campaign on twitter: mixed methods approach. JMIR Formative Research, 7(1), e49325. https://doi.org/10.2196/49325

Roberts, A. M. (2018). Public Stigma Towards the Presentation of Self-diagnosed Mental Illness (Master's thesis, Murray State University)

Romann, L. R., & Oeldorf-Hirsch, A. (2025). Exploring algorithmic cultivation–sensitive self-disclosure, self-diagnosis, and hazardous mental health communication on TikTok. Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods, and Applications. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-1105/a000474

Rutter, L. A., Howard, J., Lakhan, P., Valdez, D., Bollen, J., & Lorenzo-Luaces, L. (2023). “I haven’t been diagnosed, but I should be”—insight into self-diagnoses of common mental health disorders: cross-sectional study. JMIR Formative Research, 7(1), e39206. https://doi.org/10.2196/39206

Shrestha, A. (2018). Echo: The romanticization of mental illness on Tumblr. The Undergraduate Research Journal of Psychology at UCLA, 5, 69–78.

Suler, J. (2004). The online disinhibition effect. Cyberpsychology & Behavior, 7(3), 321-326. https://doi.org/10.1089/1094931041291295

Tiidenberg, K., Hendry, N. A., & Abidin, C. (2021). Tumblr. John Wiley & Sons.

Turuba, R., Zenone, M., Srivastava, R., Stea, J., Quintana, Y., Ow, N., Marchand, K., Kwan, A., Ong, A., Ding, X., Warren, C., Marcon, A. R., Henderson, J., Mathias, S., & Barbic, S. (2025). Do you have depression? A summative content analysis of mental health-related content on TikTok. Digital Health, 11, https://doi.org/10.1177/2055207624129706

Underhill, R., & Foulkes, L. (2025). Self-diagnosis of mental disorders: A qualitative study of attitudes on Reddit. Qualitative Health Research, 35(7), 779-792. https://doi.org/10.1177/10497323241288785

Vera, V. (2023). Nonsuicidal Self‐Injury and Content Moderation on TikTok. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 60(1), 1164-1166. https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.979

Vidamaly, S., & Lee, S. L. (2021). Young Adults' Mental Illness Aesthetics on Social Media. International Journal of Cyber Behavior, Psychology and Learning, 11(2), 13-32. https://doi.org/10.4018/IJCBPL.2021040102

Wen, R., & Miura, A. (2023). Online disinhibition: reconsideration of the construct and proposal of a new model. Osaka Human Sciences, 9, 63-81. https://doi.org/10.18910/90710

Yu, Z., Zhu, X., & Li, Y. (2024). The association between problematic short video use and suicidal ideation and self-injurious behaviors: the mediating roles of sleep disturbance and depression. BMC public health, 24(1), 1689. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-19191-5

Zannettou, S., Nemes-Nemeth, O., Ayalon, O., Goetzen, A., Gummadi, K. P., Redmiles, E. M., & Roesner, F. (2024). Analyzing user engagement with TikTok’s short format video recommendations using data donations. Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’24). https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642433

Zdanow, C., & Wright, B. (2012). The representation of self injury and suicide on emo social networking groups. African Sociological Review/Revue Africaine de Sociologie, 16(2), 81-101. https://www.ajol.info/index.php/asr/article/download/87564/77240

Zenone, M., Ow, N., & Barbic, S. (2021). TikTok and public health: a proposed research agenda. BMJ Global Health, 6(11). https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2021-007648

Zong, L. (2023). Research on Public Opinion Guidance Mechanism of Tik Tok Hot Event Explanation Short Video. Journal of Education and Educational Research, 3(1), 131-134 https://doi.org10.54097/jeer.v3i1.8372

Zsila, Á., & Reyes, M. E. S. (2023). Pros & cons: impacts of social media on mental health. BMC Psychology, 11(1), 201. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-023-01243-x