"A few years ago, I began to notice something new when adolescent girls or young women came to my office for their first psychiatric sessions. Before, patients feared being told that, in their perception, something was wrong with them. Now, these young women announced their diagnoses—attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, depression—almost before telling me their names.(...)

One girl told me she had self-diagnosed depression, and then admitted that she thought that would make me worry about her. Another girl clung to the ADHD diagnosis, especially because it made her feel less alone by connecting her to an active and dynamic online community.

Several young women insisted that they fit the clinical definition of anxiety, because it was less frightening to blame an inherent defect in their brain than to explore the causes of their real discomfort, which turned out to be a mix of anger toward their loved ones and guilt for having those feelings. Another girl said she used her various self-diagnoses as a refuge for everything that seemed "exaggerated" about herself, allowing her to fulfill what she considered the greatest aspiration of an adolescent: to be calm."