Opinion Today: “High functioning anxiety” isn’t actually a medical diagnosis

It's a hashtag.

View in browser|nytimes.com May 14, 2024 By Amanda Su Opinion Video Fellow Do you often procrastinate on tasks? Do you ever obsess over awkward interactions? Do you identify as a perfectionist or have a Type A personality? If so, then you might have high-functioning anxiety. Well, at least according to TikTok. Today you can find countless videos on social media purporting to teach young viewers how to notice the supposed telltale signs of a mental illness. It's like a New Age WebMD. And it's not just on TikTok. Over the past few decades, we've seen a massive push to destigmatize conversations about mental health. While that started for good reason, it might be having unintended consequences. There are awareness events, including Mental Health Awareness Month this May. Televised campaigns run by NGOs and corporate brands. Schools teaching therapy techniques. Celebrities opening up about their own experiences. But in our latest Opinion Video, Dr. Lucy Foulkes, an academic psychologist at Oxford University, presents the case for why all this awareness could actually be harming teenagers' mental health. To be clear, we should encourage young people to talk about their emotions and seek help when they're struggling. But by distilling anxiety or depression into bullet-point lists of symptoms, Foulkes argues that these well-intentioned efforts could be convincing teens they have mental disorders when they don't. In the video, she explains that this can become a self-fulling prophecy: If you think you have a mental illness, you may start to feel even more anxious or depressed. "It's kind of like a reverse placebo," also known by scientists as the "nocebo effect," Foulkes says. Watch the video to find out more. 'High-Functioning Anxiety Isn't a Medical Diagnosis. It's a Hashtag.' We need to be smarter about how we talk about mental illness. 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