one reason i don’t really have issues with self diagnosis and get annoyed when people make a big deal out of it is that when i was a young teenager i self diagnosed with ocd and i was told by medical professionals that i was wrong and “all kids” do the things i labeled as symptoms. well it took until i was 20 and my ocd was so debilitating that i could barely function for them to take me seriously and officially diagnose me. imagine if i got treated back when i was 14, maybe it wouldn’t have almost ruined my life!

Trigger warning: mentions of mental disorders, brief mention of thoughts of self-harm and harm to others

Ok I love all of the discourse about all of the flaws and racism/sexism/homophobia/etc. from Twilight, but one thing I haven’t seen is anyone really commenting on Sm*yer’s trivialization of mental disorders. So I’m going to. There are 2 main examples that I can think of off the top of my head.

Twilight, Chapter 4: Invitations:

“Do you have a multiple personality disorder?”

Multiple personality disorder was the original name for the disorder now known as dissociative identity disorder (DID); however, the name was changed in 1994. Not only is she trivializing a mental disorder here, she’s calling it by the wrong name. I’d recommend reading about DID yourself, but from what I understand (as a person who does not have it) it is a disorder caused by trauma in childhood before the personality is formed. As a result, different alters are created to help the child process the trauma and help the child live their life. Sm*yer perpetuates the stereotype that DID is a choice, isn’t that serious, and that the person with DID can control it. I, myself, do not know too much about the intricacies of the disorder, but I’d recommend checking out Multiplicity and Me on Youtube. Jess and her system are great at explaining DID and very informative!

Now, onto Eclipse. This is one I can talk about a lot because I know a lot about it from personal experience and it gets me heated every time. In Eclipse, Bella says that she could “be developing obsessive-compulsive disorder.” (Chapter 4: Nature) I have OCD. It’s not fun, nor is it a joke. You can develop OCD at any point in your life, but in the context here (Bella eats her cheerios one at a time and then organizes the magnets into a straight line) that’s just being meticulous/being a perfectionist which is a stereotype of having OCD. OCD is an anxiety disorder where obsessions (thoughts) lead to the overwhelming urge to perform compulsions (actions) in order to mitigate that anxiety, then the cycle starts again.

This is compounded later after Jake cuts himself with a knife and Bella whips out some bleach to clean everything. He asks her, “do you have obsessive-compulsive disorder?” and her response? “Huh. Maybe.” (Chapter 10: Scent). This is a stereotype. Some people don’t have the “hand washing compulsion”--my psychiatrist said it’s not that common, actually. Bella’s actions here are not based in anxiety and a faulty chain of logic (if I don’t clean this, someone might die. Seems dramatic, yes, but to a person with OCD, this sort of train of thought is their reality). Her actions are logical and are not over-the-top (considering there’s blood everywhere and her boyfriend is a vampire). I don’t think this is a shortcoming on the parts of the characters, but on Sm*yer and her misunderstanding of mental disorders in general.

When people think of OCD (stereotypically) they think of people who has to have things exactly right and perfect. While that can be an aspect of OCD, what these people don’t understand is that the person doesn’t just dislike it when things aren’t a certain way, it causes extreme anxiety and distress. OCD (or any mental illness for that matter) is not pretty. One of the most common obsessions is the unwanted image/thoughts of harming oneself or others, but you never see that depicted because it’s easier to show someone with OCD just washing their hands a lot and to call it a day. These watered-down descriptions/depictions of OCD causes the spread of misinformation and can lead to people not getting diagnosed (it takes an average of over 11 years to get diagnosed after the symptoms of the disorder start showing up, according to the AAFP). I’m not trying to be “holier than thou” here, I wasn’t immune to this either. The first thing I said to my psychiatrist when she diagnosed me was “have you seen my room?” I too, fell for the misrepresentations of OCD we see in the media. The point here being that it’s important to look at how mental illness is portrayed in media and educate yourself so as not to further stereotypes.

I’m sure I missed something, so feel free to add on and contribute!

Anyway, if you have questions or would like to discuss this subject further, my DM’s and asks are open. I’m open to talking about it and helping educate others.

I fully support DIY HRT. 1. it can be life-saving (and if you're wrong you can just stop) 2. it goes against gatekeeping 3. I think it's similar to self-dx, in a way

mmmmm gotta disagree on that one

I do think there are cases when self-medicating is necessary for trans people. Sometimes there’s just no way to get it through a specialist and it’s either self-medicate or kill yourself, basically. However people gotta realize that hormones are not candy, it’s a drug, and you have to be super careful with it. If you’re healthy, know how to calculate your dose and can check your levels regularly, yes maybe it’s possible to do it safely. But.

It can be dangerous. People should realize that. In fact it could be super dangerous. You might get low quality hormones if you’re buying on black market. You might overdose and possibly die (yes it’s very rare but it can happen). You might miscalculate or miss some issues and that will lead to serious health issues. Transfem HRT can cause bone density to drop and that leads to broken bones. Transmasc HRT raises blood pressure and cholesterol and can lead to heart problems. These are real concerns.

And let’s also not forget that some HRT changes are permanent. For testosterone, voice drop, body/facial hair growth and male pattern baldness are irreversible. For estrogen breast tissue growth is irreversible. Those are changes that you would have to correct with medical procedures, including surgery, if it would turn out you are wrong. It’s a serious decision, it’s not trivial.

About it being similar to self-diagnosis… not really? First of all I only support self-diagnosis when it doesn’t involve medical tests - so when it’s a simple matter of ticking off symptoms on a sheet of paper. That applies to the vast majority of psychiatric diagnosis, as well as some physical disorder diagnoses (like Ehrler-Danlos syndrome hypermobile type, for example - it’s literally just a categorization of experience, there’s no DNA test as of now).

If the diagnosis should involve blood tests, MRIs, even physical exams… don’t self-diagnose it! That’s what doctors actually can do better than you, as opposed to determine whether your stimming can be counted as stimming or whatever.

Self-diagnosis in those cases can barely harm you, plus in some cases, why do we even need to diagnose it? Like what does an autism diagnosis change? Changed literally nothing for me, except I have a paper. Autism shouldn’t be a diagnosis, it should be an identity. And for other stuff like mental illness, yes maybe you’d get better care and support with a formal diagnosis, but if you don’t have access, better have that label and use appropriate resources rather than do nothing.

But with any sort of meds… it can be dangerous. It really can. So please don’t do it unless it is vital and there’s literally no other way. If it’s self-med HRT or suicide, by all means choose self-med HRT but be careful. And if you can wait or can find another soliution, opt for that. I am waiting for HRT myself and I am not planning on self-medicating because I don’t want to take that responsibility and accept the risks.

So yeah, that’s my opinion.