The Trend of Faking Disorder
Tiktok is now considered one of the most popular social media platforms. Many business players have also utilized Tiktok for their promotion because of its popularity. However, a compilation of Tiktok videos pops up on my Youtube explore with the title “Tiktok Fake Disorder Compilation” not too long ago which, of course, doesn’t seem any good.
With the freedom to express our feeling on any online platform, the trend of faking disorder has also massively grown. Even before opening up about your mental health hasn’t become a thing, the term “Fake Disorder” has spread throughout the internet. Nowadays, more types of content are made and somehow it seems more confusing that only worsens the stigma of fake disorder. But even so, this trend, along with its stigma, seems to not going fade in any near time.
There is content about some creators’ confession for self-diagnosing themselves. Self-diagnosis is not recommended by professionals because, as unprofessional, we are very likely to falsely diagnose ourselves. It is also very likely to worsen our situation subconsciously. Sadly, many creators believe diagnosing a mental disorder is as simple as taking a questionnaire.
Diagnosing a mental disorder requires professionals to learn every aspect of the patient’s life to understand their emotions, their way of thought, what may have caused them to suffer from unstable emotions, and other personal things that’ll help professionals picture their patients clearly and accurately. Only then, professional can compare their patient’s behaviors with the DSM (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) to diagnose their mental health status. Not to mention, there are many types of disorders and some share quite similar symptoms. Diagnosing is so complicated that some professionals sometimes misdiagnose their patients.
As we all know, many patients with mental disorders suffer from a traumatic childhood or any traumatic event that creates and or triggers their disorders. And since it’s traumatic, it’s only logical for anyone to try to avoid anything that will only remind them of it if they haven’t found a way to accept and deal with it. However, some creators also post content where they consciously trigger their trauma to show how they would react to traumatic reminders. Even if one defends itself by stating that it’s for education only and to raise mental health awareness, it still doesn’t make sense for anyone to do something that will only make them feel worse.
Some creators also like to romanticize their self-diagnosed mental disorders. Same as other illnesses, mental disorders usually make one feel uncomfortable for having them and motivate one to fight them back. Romanticizing a mental disorder doesn’t show one’s success in making peace with it, but rather indicates one’s perception that having a mental disorder is normal and that mental disorder is okay to be friends with. Although sometimes mental disorders are hardly or even cannot be cured and force the patients to make peace to live with them, but it will never be something to romanticize. This is where many people hand wrongly misunderstood.
DID — dissociative identity disorder that’s also known as multiple personality disorder — is the most brought up disorder in this trend. Maybe because the idea of having more than one identity in a body is so unbelievable and interesting that it often attracts a lot of attention. But since this disorder is so complex, it’s often misunderstood.
From thousands of DID videos, some are accused of faking DID. One of them is about introducing the creator alters. Of course, as someone who’s not very familiar with DID, we often feel very interested to learn about these alters. Maybe that’s what motivates these creators to introduce their alter to the world. However, some of these alters are somewhat unrealistic. Although one can have an alter of a rock, what I mean by unrealistic alter is an alter that’s originally a fictional character from a movie, animation, or series.
Alters of DID patients are usually created at a very young age when the traumatic event occurred. Maybe because at a young age we are capable of creating our private world. The occurrence of the alter was designed to help and protect the host from their traumatic memory or things that will remind them of it. On the other hand, fictional characters that were adopted as the creators’ alter are usually introduced from recent trending movies, such as Kang Sae-Byeok from Squid Game. Although this series was just released a month ago, some content creators already claimed to have this character as their alter. Whether it’s for entertainment only or not, this type of video is often accused of faking DID because it doesn’t fit the theory of DID alter. It may also mislead people who don’t know about DID into believing that DID is a “fun” disorder that makes us can be anyone we want to be and anytime we want it to be.
Another type of video that is also often accused of faking DID is videos of an alter taking over their host social media account. What makes these videos seem off is how the creator switch to the other alter for only a split second. More shockingly, these alter can continue the conversation by switching to the other alter and directly answering the previous alter sentence. The truth is, one can’t switch to the other alter too fast since it requires more than a single trigger. Encina also stated in an interview with MedCircle that book is the only media that helps her to communicate with her alters. She also stated that each alters have each personality, thoughts, and life and therefore they also value privacy and rarely share things with her.
However, Dr. Kirk from Psychology in Seattle stated the content sharing by these creators about their mental disorder self-diagnosis indicates that they are well aware of their struggle with their mental health. Sadly, they don’t aware of how dangerous self-diagnosis can be.
It’s sad that aside from every wonderful thing social media platforms have brought into our lives, they also somehow create a way for negativity to grow. But if this trend is not going to be taken down, will mental health issues become more normalized and well-distributed?
