How to tell if a teen's mental health issue is real or an excuse
It is difficult to distinguish between normal adolescent growing pains, like standard anxiety about public speaking or teenage sleep habits, and actual clinical conditions or disorders. This uncertainty leaves teachers and parents struggling to know when to make allowances and when to hold students accountable to normal responsibilities.
What the numbers show
Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count
- The most recent one is from October 2026.
- This comes up 12.7× more often in r/Teachers than across the site as a whole.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Demanding official doctor's notes or IEP/504 accommodation files before making allowances
- 2Giving talks to students explaining the difference between normal nervousness and clinical anxiety
- 3Offering alternative presentation formats (smaller audience, video) for sincere students while denying passes to those using it as an excuse
- 4Internally keeping note of potential mental health needs without formally engaging with the unverified self-diagnoses
- 5Talking to them
- 6Listening closely to what they say
- 7Looking for subtle hints
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Not that things can't exist in people or i won't make allowances or adapt lessons for them. But im sick of kids trying to use these (plus adhd) as an excuse to not try.”source ↗
“I do (pretty much yearly) need to give a talk to the effect of "it's normal to feel anxious about doing public speaking, that does not mean you can be excused from the assignment"”source ↗
“Some of them truly are consumed by anxiety, while others are unable to distinguish feeling nervous from an anxiety disorder.”source ↗
“On a related, they also switch gender identities every few weeks. And names. I can’t tell what anyone’s name is anymore... Trying to navigate the conversations around this leads to one internal facepalm after another lol.”source ↗
“I feel like people dont realize how hard it is to tell the difference between normal growing up and something actually being wrong.”source ↗
“Sleeping. It can be very hard to tell the sleep of a growing kid in middle/high school vs the sleep habits of a depressed child.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 6Why do I get severely depressed and anxious early in the school year?
- 7Why does my toddler space out after learning a new skill?
- 12How to handle extreme toddler separation anxiety and tantrums
- 92How to stop letting accounting stress ruin my life?
- 4How to stop replaying a near-miss accident with your child
- 7Am I too unstable mentally to be a teacher?