You Spelled 'Loonies' Wrong...

Teenage girls with ‘invisible illnesses’ are posting upsetting videos of themselves online which generate thousands of likes as part of a new community – called ‘Spoonies’.

Thousands of teens are banding together on social media as part of the movement, which also encourages them to lie to doctors in order to get the diagnosis that they want.

Hmmm, sounds familiar.

Experts say that while 'functional disease is a real and chronic problem' it is often not the one the teens 'think they have.' Dr. Katie Kompoliti, a neurologist at Rush University Medical Center, told Commonsense News: ‘It’s generated by anxiety in most cases, or another comorbidity, and then propagated by the ease of TikTok.’

This is the modern equivalent of 'I saw Goody Proctor with the Devil!' isn't it? Only instead of being confined to rural isolated bored young girls and spread by gossip, it now reaches all around the world in the blink of an eye...

Others claim that they are suffering from ‘medical gaslighting’, which includes being told by your doctor to lose weight to help your condition. Some of them also make money off of their platforms, of which some have hundreds of thousands of followers, by using it to promote offers for glasses or supplements.

The confluence of publicity and money - no wonder it's spreading!

Dr. Mark Sullivan, a psychiatrist at the University of Washington Medical Center, is concerned that the internet has created ‘communities of grievance’ that led patients to adopt ‘victim mentalities.’

For once, a medical professional is right on the money. The question is, what can be done about it? I'm not one of those to demand curbs on technology (as if that could really be achieved) but it does seem to be a major vector for this disease...