I have seen some people both online and offline who I am basing this off of. It seems to be mainly a thing with young teenagers or otherwise immature people, but I maintain that this DOES happen. I have seen people in real life and in forums, self-diagnose themselves with schizophrenia despite the fact that their symptoms could amount to anxiety/depression, sometimes even DESPITE a doctor telling them explicitly they don’t have schizophrenia. I think some people really do view it as a “romantic disease” a la tuberculosis in the 19th century. Even I will admit as someone who has been crippled by the schizophrenia diagnosis for the past 6 years, that there is something archetypal, alluring, interesting about the concept of madness to people, which is in somewhat of a dialectic with society’s profound stigmatization of it.
I had a friend/lover once who stuck around with me for about a year, in her words, because I was “fascinating” but had no problem blocking me when she got sick of the brutal reality of schizophrenia. I think in some sick way people truly are fascinated by us. Which is both pleasing, like okay, I am not worthless, but it is also really sick and annoying. Sometimes when people find out I am schizophrenic, they ask all sorts of stupid and offensive questions because they are interested. Both friends, acquaintances, AND mental health professionals.
Society has a very strange, problematic, and contradictory relationship with madness. I believe this is most evident with the occasional teenager online or IRL who self-diagnoses themselves with schizophrenia. You can also see it in pop culture, like movies, and also popular music (singing about “crazy” and the “voices in my head”). I mean, people say ■■■■ like “everybody’s a little crazy” and in today’s society, mental health problems are HUGE, but that leads to people mistaking their normal life pains for mental illness, which you can see on a lesser degree with young people claiming to have anxiety and depression without a diagnosis and without a loss in functioning.
One of my close friends, when we were younger, I really didn’t like him, because he would self-diagnose himself with a bunch of mental disorders like bipolar, OCD, et cetera. And I think it was because despite a pretty idyllic life (peaceful family, huge trust fund, utterly normal life despite him being an edgy metalhead Satanist to rebel against his parents) he still experienced pain LIKE WE ALL DO, and desperately wanted that validation. Which is normal.
And so, yeah, I REALLY DO THINK that some people WANT to pretend to have schizophrenia when they don’t really have it. I’ve seen it. When I was going to school at a mental institution, there was a borderline girl who pretended to have schizophrenia. I actually believed her until it became apparent that her doctors disagreed with her and never diagnosed her with that, and that she was actually borderline. She bragged about being “schizoprenic” too. Always “haha my schizo ass” and stuff like that. She also made up lies about stuff. Said that the kid who was severely developmentally disabled was schizophrenic, and that she had heard the doctors discussing it, which is such bs. The kid was obviously developmentally disabled and hadn’t just “lost his mind” like she said, and there is NO WAY doctors would be discussing a diagnosis with her in earshot. Also pretended to suddenly remember a repressed memory of grave sexual assault in the middle of class… She was in other ways super manipulative. And you better believe I called her on her bs after I figured stuff out.
I really do think that people who self-diagnose most likely don’t actually have it, but that somehow they actually WANT it, and I would even go so far as to say there are sometimes cases of Munchausen by Internet on different forums… Maybe I’m just paranoid.
What do you guys think? And remember guys, it is NEVER okay to accuse someone of “faking” here. That is HUGELY invalidating and honestly should result in a temporary ban. Even if you suspect anything, you cannot take that risk with someone who is most likely actually schizophrenic.
and can be cured it really bothers me when he goes on like that. it makes me feel very uncomfortable. Ive told him so but he just cant help himself.
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