For comparison with real physical illness because that seems to help people who don’t understand mental illness:
My mother and I have arthritis. We brought this to the attention of doctors after self-diagnosis, and guess what?
We were right, and it helped to get treatment.
My grandmother has lupus. She recognized her symptoms in a list online, and self diagnosed. She brought it to a doctors attention and guess what? She was right, and was able to get treatment.
My mom, me, and almost all of my siblings have a genetic disorder that causes us not to be able to process certain essential vitamins and inhibits our bodies ability to make certain neurotransmitters.
We saw the symptoms online, self diagnosed, and completely changed our lifestyles when it comes to diet and how we approach some of our mental and physical symptoms.
At the time, we were unable to go to doctors about it because of money problems, but when we were, a year later, able to go and get genetic testing done, guess what?
We had been right, and two of my baby siblings have homozygous mutations, meaning they could have become very, very ill if they hadn’t gone into eating solid foods that were tailored to the specific dietary restrictions they have.
Self diagnosis is not only an incredibly useful tool to get off to the right start in handling your own mental and physical health, it is actually encouraged for patients to come in with an idea of what might be wrong.
You know your body and mind very well. They are you. If you have a good personal understanding of what’s probably wrong, and the methods of treatment you try out help, it’s the best you can do until you can afford to get to a doctor.