09/08/2026
What Does It Mean When Patients Tell You Their Google Diagnoses?
Recently, several patients in their twenties have introduced themselves to me by telling me the diagnosis they got from Google, TikTok, or some other website. And while it was tempting to ignore these self-diagnoses, I thought it was important to understand not only why the patient had done the research, but what it meant to the individual to turn a bout of sadness, or difficulty in a relationship, or worry into a psychiatric label.
For one of them, it seemed easier to look for a psychologist who specialized in the diagnosis she thought she had. For another, he was sure that he had multiple anxiety diagnoses and felt that there was meaning in that abundance. For others, finding a label provided validity for what they were feeling. But, starting with a label is a cautionary place to start.
As a psychologist, I have to remember to look beyond the labels and see what the initial symptoms were and what made a patient pick up the phone in the first place. What was the triggering event or emotion that stood out and created discomfort? What created the loneliness or the sense of dislocation? Is the patient even able to remember back that far? The danger in putting labels on things too soon is that they can obscure the precursor events, thoughts, and feelings that brought the patient to this place. And a name of a mental illness is not a cure.
In therapy, we look for the thoughts and feelings behind the labels and how we can help people find power in stronger coping skills and healthier words. Once upon a time I treated a patient whose child had asthma. As an asthmatic myself, I struggled every time she called asthma a disease. Finally, I shared my own diagnosis and suggested that she consider that her child’s asthma could be considered a medical “condition” especially since her child was doing well on medication. She nodded at that suggestion and went home. The next week she told me how much better she felt because a condition was a lot less scary than a disease.
This is not to say that there are not serious worries and illnesses, both medical and mental, that are of concern. But in therapy, a diagnoses may be a place to come to after a thorough evaluation, and then the important work of therapy can begin. The label is not what is important; what matters is the improvement in feelings, the new coping skills, and the changes in thinking that are the result of good therapy.
