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> The authors hypothesize that for some children, framing their struggles as mental health disorders that require treatment can actually worsen their situation by causing them to ruminate on it.

Not just to children, just in general, the narratives we use to interpret the things that happen to us can actually cause more harm than the event itself.

Simplistic example, but take a culture where scars are a mark of pride, say from surviving battle, compared to one where they are seen as ugly and so shameful. The physical harm in each case is the same, but the mental impact is very different.

We even see this in trauma, like with sexual assault. Being pitied and told something that happened to you was the worst thing that can possibly happen to someone, it makes a far worse mental impact than it otherwise might have made without that framing.

There are a number of reasons for this, but I think in general, disempowering people by removing their sense of control and the notion that they're resilient becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Sometimes, some people really are less resilient or lose their sense of control in some circumstances, and then they do need that help, but that should probably not be the default approach. We've had a bit too much of an over correction to the old, "suck it up and walk it off" mentality.

I wish I understood this many years ago.

> There is a weird trend toward over-diagnosing common life struggles as major clinical health issues requiring intervention. I think this comes from a place of good intentions, where people don’t want to miss anyone who might have a major mental health issue that will benefit from treatment. However, over-diagnosing mental health conditions and convincing kids they even common struggles are actually mental health issues that require advanced treatment techniques has the opposite effect of amplifying common struggles into something much bigger.

My subjective unprofessional opinion is that this tendency is also an over-compensation in trying to destigmatize mental illness, and to treat mental illness as illness and sufferers thereof as victims, rather than blaming them for lacking motivation or whatever unempathetic BS people used to think.

Hopefully this is a short-lived trend and things will balance somewhere a little more sensible.

> There’s a secondary phenomenon in some demographics wherein having a mental health diagnosis is perceived as providing some social advantage,

Mental illness had some degree of social gravity (not necessarily clout or advantage) when I was a teenager back in the "emo" and "scene" days of the 00s. The phenomenon has clearly evolved somewhat, but I don't think it's entirely new. What is new is its reach.

I would take the "tips on how to say the right things" in a more favorable light. It can be extremely difficult to get proper help or diagnosis, especially if you're marginalized (gay, black, female, transgender, poor, bad at speaking...) I've definitely seen shit like black boys not being diagnosed with autism or young girls not getting diagnosed with adhd

When I was in college in the 90s some of the fraternities had systemized this.

You’d get a diagnosis, get a drug that had value for sale or you could take it, and the reasonable accommodation for ADHD was taking a test in a private room with open book.

I was pissed when I found out as tests were usually graded in a curve, and these idiots broke the curve for the rest of us.

Not idiots, though

I would argue that any test which is a race against the clock is a bad test. Whatever you are trying to test you are almost certainly not measuring (i suppose reality doesn't care and people still have to deal with bad tests).

Basically every test has a time limit in school. No one save a small number of learning disabled kids struggles to finish in time. If it takes you the whole time you don't know it!

The fact that nearly every test has a time limit isn't proof that time limits are useful. Furthermore the majority of tests taken in school are completely forgotten even a year later, meaning that students didn't "know" the information in the first place, they were just able to regurgitate it for a useless exercise in stress and make-work.

Tests are useful as spaced repetition, and spaced repetition is good for remembering. That students may not remember a specific test a year later doesn't seem relevant. Time limits are necessary because everything is time limited, even when applying this knowledge in a job, and if you're struggling to finish in time, then that indicates areas that need work.

Most (tech) jobs put a premium on being right over being fast. Nobody cares if you get the wrong answer quickly. Person who takes longer but gets a better answer will usually do better in their career.

Learning you're getting the wrong answer quickly is a big part of why we test.

Taking longer can help your career, but there's a limit. Test times were always very generous for people ahead of the curve, short for people below, and just about right for everyone else, because that's how they're designed.

Most tests i've taken are not structured that way. Most of the time you need a multipart question to get significant benefit of realizing you are wrong fast. In a world of multiple choice tests, that is pretty rare.

Ancedotal, but when i was in school i remember people top of the class were often last to finish their test (i guess because they double checked things more).

An aside. I think people care about speed. An MIT degree finished in four years is more impressive than one finished in 8

Well that's the point though isn't it? A good test might technically have a time limit, but time won't be the limiting factor for most people, so nobody will think extra time is some "unfair" advantage.

There is also profit in diagnoses. For the diagnoser.