Alberta woman diagnosed with autism after social media videos sparked self-discovery
Amy Brandley, 27, was diagnosed with ADHD as a child but later sought an autism diagnosis after seeing relatable experiences online.
Amy Brandley, an Alberta artist diagnosed with ADHD as a child, later discovered she is also autistic after seeing relatable experiences shared by young women on social media.
"It was both a long journey, but also a few sparks here and there of seeing this content and being like, that seems rather familiar, that seems rather relatable," said Brandley, 27.
She says she consulted mental health specialists throughout her childhood for issues like not being able to control her emotions, but her concerns were always attributed to ADHD.
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After meeting with an autism expert and undergoing tests, Brandley was diagnosed with both ADHD and autism spectrum disorder.
Mental health experts say they are seeing an increasing number of young patients leaning on advice from social media to connect symptoms to a potential diagnosis, even before consulting a physician.
Ottawa child psychiatrist Dr. Gail Beck says she has noticed that young people, especially women, are increasingly asking about autism and ADHD over the past decade.
"One of the things that's … very different, is the number of young people who come to me and tell me that they're neurodiverse," Beck told Dr. Brian Goldman, host of The Dose podcast.
Toronto psychiatrist Dr. Doron Almagor says patients who were never diagnosed as children may see examples of neurodivergence on social media and find that something just clicks.
Boys are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and autism than girls, in part because girls are more likely to mask their symptoms, says Almagor, a former president of the Canadian ADHD Alliance.
"They would … try not to cause any trouble, not get in trouble, try to do their work and not get diagnosed with either ADHD or autism."
Beck says when patients come to her having already researched their symptoms, the first thing she does is ask them to share their research with her.
"And if they tell me ‘I got it on TikTok, I'm on a group on Instagram,’ whatever they tell me, I will look it up and often with them in the office," she said.
Montreal psychiatrist Dr. Alexandre Hudon says social media is an everyday part of life, so clinicians cannot minimize its influence on how people examine their symptoms.
"It can be really rich because you can open [them] up and really, really try to get a better sense of how they ended up using this information to put labels on their life," said Hudon, who researches how social media and artificial intelligence influence youth mental health.
Almagor cautions that not all online sources of information are equal, noting some influencers could be paid content creators capitalizing on the mental health distress of others.
He says patients also need to be open to formal diagnostic evaluations, especially if their symptoms point to other reasons for their distress.
Some polls suggest almost half of respondents have turned to artificial intelligence chatbots for medical advice.
Almagor says AI chatbots can be useful but adds they can often make mistakes because they lack lived human experiences.
"Across medicine, you need to be very careful in taking any AI chatbot as medical advice," he said.
Brandley, who sometimes shares about her journey to diagnosis on her own social media channels, says she thinks people rely a little too much on chatbots.
"Even if it's just like some person who has like 300 followers on TikTok sharing their experience, I think that's more valuable than what an AI can tell you," she said.
With files from CBC News
Amara Okafor covers health, medical research and public health in Canada for Novello Desserts.