Over the past decade, psychological terms from therapy rooms have seeped into everyday conversation through the arms of social media and pop culture. While this shift has increased awareness, it has also blurred the line between clinical realities and casual self-description. When the validity of certain psychological diagnoses in manuals like the DSM-5-TR is already heavily debated and disagreements between professionals are common, we now face the added problem of glamourization and casual misuse of these labels by the general public.
This is not to say people don’t benefit from recognising they are not alone in their struggles. Many find relief and belonging in naming their experiences with a broad diagnostic category. There is, however, a distinction to be made between that and the churn of misinformed, oversimplified content that romanticizes many mental health disorders (with ADHD, PTSD, autism spectrum disorders, anxiety disorders, and depression among the most popular online).
Much of this self-diagnosis culture reduces complex issues to everyday struggles common among those with high screen time and limited social interaction, not uncommon in today’s youth. Having a niche interest but avoiding social contact becomes “I must be autistic.” Struggling to read a few pages of a book at a time turns into “I must have ADD.”
This symptom-checklist mindset, fuelled by social media, often ignores the deeper social, psychological and biological factors needed for an accurate diagnosis. Without a proper case formulation (a fuller understanding of a person’s history and context), these labels risk being inaccurate and ultimately harmful.
At times, this culture facilitates a ‘demonization of the other’. In this mindset, we push away traits and emotions we dislike in ourselves by pinning it onto others through labels. Once labelled, the others may be shamed or dismissed based on a misrepresentation, for example, every ex becomes a “narcissist” and any criticism of your worldview is automatically “toxic.” For others, labelling becomes a crutch or as a way to soothe oneself. They adopt the identity of someone who has endured a lot and as a result, believe the world owes them an apology or preferential treatment.
More Labels, More Problems?
Sure, Instagram reels and YouTube shorts may be well-meaning attempts at mental health education. The benefits are real: greater awareness of legitimate mental health issues and increased willingness to seek help. However, the downsides are harder to ignore.
Therapy speak is often weaponised, and seems to serve the function of mostly assigning blame to stressors, people or childhoods, without taking personal responsibility for changing one’s own unhelpful patterns.
While people undoubtedly face injustices and discrimination, using therapeutic concepts solely to validate one’s pain can stall genuine growth. This is why therapy should not end with validation but should build psychological maturity and drive meaningful change.
Without that, terms from the therapy room can become tools for sustaining victimhood rather than encouraging transformation.
In India, this trend is both helpful and harmful. On one hand, mental health stigma, especially in urban areas, is slowly lifting and the youth now have language to describe what they feel. On the other, limited access to qualified professionals means misinformation and psychobabble spread unchecked. Diagnostic terms stripped of nuance become mere buzz words. In this climate, “my ADD brain forgot what I was saying mid-sentence” and “that was my trauma response kicking in.” have become casual throwaway lines.
This casualization dilutes the seriousness of actual disorders. When everyone apparently has the condition, those who truly meet criteria risk not being taken seriously. The harm deepens when diagnoses are self-assigned, without assessment or professional formulation.
What Mental Health Professionals Can Do
When clients arrive asking whether they fit a diagnosis, the response from a psychologist or psychiatrist should not be to tick off symptoms, but to ask what the diagnosis would mean for them.
In the effort to build trust, professionals may sometimes jump too quickly to testing, bypassing a richer understanding of the client’s life. When applicable, the reason for seeking a diagnosis should be a necessary part of history-taking.
There is also a worrying trend toward multiple diagnoses assigned based solely on scales and personality tests, without the slower, more layered work of exploring contradictions and paradoxes in a client’s experience. Each case deserves to be looked at closely for its complexity, not stuffed into the nearest category.
Even within a diagnostic framework, professionals should weave together information from the client’s narrative, make mental status observations, and rule out major conditions before considering narrower ones. For example, inattention should prompt careful exclusion of anxiety and mood disorders and medical causes before evaluating for ADHD. Likewise, when a client presents with limited social interactions, mood and anxiety disorders along with trauma-related conditions should be considered before proceeding to autism assessments.
Moving Beyond Labels Towards Stories
Accurate diagnoses can be supplemented with the work prompted by meaning-oriented therapies. These can help shift the focus from “What diagnosis do I have?” to “I wonder what my experiences mean to me.”
They invite clients to examine how experiences shape their self-story, which parts of that story give them fulfilment, and how they might confront meaninglessness in their lives.
The aim of such a therapy would be to cultivate the recognition of the value of pain and difficult emotions in psychological development. This can help people move beyond belonging to a category, toward building a life anchored in purpose. Without this, we risk fostering a culture of perpetual victimhood, where labels soothe but do not transform.
Archana Dineshkumar Manhachery
Archana Dineshkumar Manhachery is a counselling psychologist and founder of Soul Shelf, her private therapy practice, where she helps clients uncover the patterns that shape their lives. She has previously worked at BITS Pilani-Hyderabad where she provided counselling to students and faculty, and at a rehabilitation centre in Hyderabad supporting individuals with psychosis and schizophrenia. Alongside her therapeutic work, she is a consulting science editor for IRAP India, a water resources research organization. She can be reached at [email protected]