I’ve related to Marinette since pretty early on in the show and I think it’s because she seems like she has depression, anxiety, and adhd. This really hit me when she started having a panic attack in the finale.

I am by no means a medical professional, but I did do a lot of research when I was trying to self diagnose before getting official diagnoses and I have personal experience as well as knowing about the experiences of people close to me.

Marinette is shown to be very forgetful. She tends to rush out the door without the things she needs, typically late because she forgot there was something she needed to attend. Her tendency for poor time management is not helped by how easily she gets distracted, or involved in her work. She has a very wide range of obsessions, which is made especially clear when she declares that she is going to do EVERYTHING in Wishmaker. She’s quite socially awkward and seems to have difficulty explaining her thoughts to others. She also tends to be very chatty and rambly and has trouble regulating both this and her volume (she tends to get very loud when she is excited). She has difficulty thinking things all the way through and tends to miss important details. However, when she is very focused on a task (such as when she is fighting an akuma as ladybug), she has excellent problem solving skills and pays attention to every detail. She’s very creative, which is indicated by her hobbies almost all having to do with design. She’s very sporadic, jumping from thought to thought or task to task very quickly, and others have trouble following her train of thought. She also has anger issues and gets frustrated by small matter very easily. These are all symptoms of adhd, and there are almost certainly more things I missed.

Marinette also struggles initiate things, not so much in a schoolwork sense but more that she has a lot of trouble making phone calls, talking to people, or similar. She tends to get a bit panicked over these kinds of scenarios. Marinette also has a desperate need to get things done on time, as shown in Gamer 2.0 when she has to force herself to do everything she needs to and panics about not having things finished on time. She tends to overreact, overthink, and assume the worst, shown by how any time she makes a mistake, she treats it like the end of the world, and often refuses to go forward with things due to her intense fear of what could go wrong. She’s perfectionistic, and will spend time putting in much more effort than is necessary to make things fit her standards (although this is often counteracted by her adhd, which makes her rush over things just to get them finished, like when she made sunglasses for Jagged Stone). These are all indicators that she has anxiety, but the biggest one is that we’ve seen her have anxiety attacks and panic attacks a few times. (Not to mention she definitely seems to be one of the most empathetic when Juleka has panic attacks).

Marinette, in addition to everything else, clearly suffers from depression as a result of trauma, namely due to her role as ladybug and as a guardian but also due to being bullied for years. She is constantly putting herself down, and she often feels as though she is worthless, a failure, not good enough. She tends to feel hopeless and she cries easily. She shows a lack of interest in things she used to enjoy, coupled with often having little or no energy. We see these things in the lessening of her playing video games, designing clothes, even spending time with her friends.

It seems pretty clear that although she might already have dealt with anxiety, it has largely developed due to her adhd. Most of her anxious tendencies are ones that overcompensate for her adhd. For example, she always quickly corrects herself when she stumbles over her words, either repeating herself or finding a replacement, which seems indicative of being worried about what others will think of her for what she accidentally says (which seems very likely considering she’s had instances of misspeaking and then being laughed at and getting embarrassed).

It’s also worth noting that she has some symptoms that could be attributed to multiple things, such as being easily startled, assuming others think badly of her, having trouble starting things she needs to work on, and more.

Overall our girl needs therapy and I love her and am glad that in season four her mental health and adrien’s are treated with seriousness instead of using it as a joke like some media does (*coughlookingatyouendgamethorcough*)