Mental health is very integral to our well-being, as the World Health Organization defines mental health as the way for people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their abilities, and contribute to their communities. 

Issues around mental health disorders have taken many shapes and forms over the years. Mental health disorders such as depression, anxiety, and bipolar weren’t recognized or treated in the past.

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Some speculate that the start of viewing depression, for example, as a mental health disorder didn’t happen until the nineties. People who suffered from mental health issues before that were sent to mental asylums, where some reports claimed that people with mental illness were drugged or electroshocked. 

Thankfully, the perception of mental health issues has changed in recent years. The change led to a focus on mental health, educating the public about different mental health issues, advancements in therapy, medications, and more. 

However, things may have changed too much as a “self-diagnosis” phenomenon came to be. Self-diagnosis is identifying a medical condition in yourself. People reading an illness’ symptoms and declaring that they have that illness is one example. 

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These days, many online “self-assessment” tools allow people to take a quiz to potentially see if they are showing signs of a specific disorder. However, these tools clarify that they don’t count as an official diagnosis. 

According to reports, self-diagnosing can be dangerous as it leads people to jump to conclusions, resulting in wrongful treatment. Moreover, there are many different mental health issues, and some of them share similar symptoms; some are linked to environmental reasons and others to genetics, so it’s challenging to diagnose them accurately.

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