In this thesis, I focus on adolescents who diagnose themselves with psychosocial problems and mental health disorders. In addition to their perspecitves on self-diagnosis, I am also interested in the views of practitioners who work with such adolescents. During adolescence, mental health is marked by risks, feelings of uncertainty, and fear due to rapid psychophysical development. Psychosocial problems are on the rise, and with the dominance of the medical discourse and the increasing availability of information about mental disorders online, self-diagnosis is also becoming more common. In the theoretical part, I first define mental health and psychosocial distress, focusing on the adolescence. I then explore the process of diagnosis, embedding it in a historical and social context, and examine self-diagnosis in connection to the use of the Internet and social media. I investigate the causes, benefits, and pitfalls of self-diagnosis. In the empirical part, through qualitative research, I examine the motivations and significance of self-diagnosis for adolescents, explore their experiences, and analyze the connection between self-diagnosis, the internet, and social media. Additionally, I seek to understand what kind of support they would like to receive when coping with their distress. To gain a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon, I also consider the perspectives of practitioners working in the field of psychosocial support for young people. This provides insight into their perceptions of self-diagnosis, their ways of addressing and responding to it, and their views on its connection to the internet and social media. I conduct six half structured interviews— three with adolescents and three with practitioners. All the adolescents included in the study have experience with self-diagnosis, and some have also received professional help. The professionals included in this study work in different counseling services and have several years of experience in the field of youth work. After conducting a qualitative content analysis of the data, I interpret it. I find that adolescents use self-diagnosis mainly to understand their own mental health, to seek validation for their experiences and feelings, and gain a sense of security, belonging, and guidance in seeking (self-)help. At the same time, self-diagnosis can be a source of anxiety and stress due to unreliable information and misinterpretations of it, which can lead to incorrect self-diagnoses. This, in turn, may result in ineffective help-seeking or trigger a self-fulfilling prophecy. Online content conveys the message that having a diagnosis is the new norm, offering quick legitimization of self-diagnoses and access to communities that support them. Adolescents have mixed experiences with seeking professional help, expressing dissatisfaction mainly with the overemphasis on medication, the lack of holistic treatment, the need for self-advocacy, difficulties accessing free support, and door-to-door referrals. Professionals in this study strive to approach self-diagnosing adolescents with understanding and empathy. However, in counseling sessions, they tend to distance themselves from diagnoses and focus on treating individuals as whole persons within their life contexts.
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