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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   27227 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

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Psychology itself isn’t that rigorous, and especially if you’re dealing entirely with self-reported phenomena, it’s not particularly good at skepticism. If I go complaining of feeling sad for several weeks I can get diagnosed with depression. If you go in claiming to lose stuff a lot (whatever you personally consider “a lot”) you can get diagnosed with ADHD. As such I tend to be skeptical of trans diagnosis simply from my experience of being diagnosed adhd — it took ten minutes and I didn’t even go in seeking a diagnosis.

Which also becomes a problem when the symptoms of these disorders are known. People want to be diagnosed, and with helpful checklists, they know what to say to get that. Kids who want to be trans know what to say to the shrink before the first session. And there’s a good chance that a psychiatrist isn’t going to look into whether the person is lying or exaggerating symptoms. There are no fake symptoms that people think are true of trans people but aren’t.

As far as social contagion, I think it’s just like anything else. Most teens crave acceptance and if you’re vulnerable, being told that some trait is desirable they’ll at least fake it to fit in or be cool. And there are examples all over TikTok of kids faking all kinds of mental illnesses up to and including having multiple personalities. It seems like it would be weird if this is the one illness nobody fakes, especially when much of our culture celebrates it as the cool disorder.

As such I tend to be skeptical of trans diagnosis simply from my experience of being diagnosed adhd — it took ten minutes and I didn’t even go in seeking a diagnosis.

Really? I thought it was very hard to get an ADHD diagnosis, especially as an adult.

Really? I thought it was very hard to get an ADHD diagnosis, especially as an adult.

Massively depends on the country in question. I've been trying to get ADHD medication for over 2 years in Eastern Europe with no success so far.

There are two perverse inscentive to get you slapped with ADHD, get you out the door faster and kickbacks for prescriptions (which are apparently 100% legal)

And that isn’t true for a population that will need lots of surgery, hormones for life, and lots of follow up care? I mean, if anything, those same incentives are more present in trans populations who spend thousands on medical treatments overa decade.

In the US, it definitely isn’t.

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