Self-Diagnosis: A New Risk

Raising public awareness can backfire, and self-diagnosis explains why

STUDY: Foulkes L et al, Nature Reviews Psychology 2026;5:173–184

STUDY TYPE: Review

FUNDING: Independent

Background

Mental health awareness campaigns are everywhere. They clearly do some good, but this paper looks asks if they may also cause harm, leading some to misinterpret normal distress as disorder.

The Study

This narrative review synthesized evidence from cohort studies, surveys, and 11 controlled experiments published between 2010 and 2025. It examined both the benefits and potential harms of mental health awareness campaigns, school-based mental health programs, and social media mental health content, with particular attention to adolescents.

Campaigns reduce stigma and increase help-seeking. But the experimental literature tells a more complicated story. Across multiple studies, awareness materials increased self-diagnosis rates without changing actual symptoms. Participants were more likely to label their experiences as disorders after viewing awareness content, even when their symptom scores didn’t budge.

In one well-designed study, attending an ADHD awareness workshop doubled the rate of false self-diagnosis among people who didn’t meet ADHD criteria. School-based universal mental health interventions show a similar pattern. A large trial of 153 schools found that a mental health awareness program worsened internalizing symptoms at 9–12 month follow-up.

The proposed mechanism

Awareness may set negative expectations that then become self-fulfilling. Those with existing symptoms, unstable self-concept, or high suggestibility appear most at risk. Adolescents are especially susceptible, given their identity development, peer influence, and exposure to mental health content online.

Practice Implications

1. Many of us are seeing this play out in practice, and perhaps Dr. Freud probably fanned the same flames with his best-seller The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.
2. But now we live in a med-centric culture, and while unnecessary psychotherapy is costly and time-consuming, meds have more side effects.