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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the strange relationship we have with mental health diagnoses. We reach for them when we’re trying to make sense of ourselves, and often find relief from giving a name to our experience. But too easily, these labels and definitions can become identities.
A clear diagnosis can be life-changing. An accurate diagnosis can be life-saving. But I think acceptance of these labels and their positive aspects should live alongside healthy skepticism of the diagnostic system itself. Considering diagnoses within the sociocultural context in which they’re derived can help us avoid turning these tools into weapons against ourselves.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM)—that thick clinical text that gives us our official mental health labels—is as politically influenced as it is clinical. Consider that homosexuality was listed as a mental disorder in the DSM until 1973. Responding to a strong push from LGBT+ activists, the council of psychiatrists that decides on diagnosis voted for it to be removed.
This should remind us that what we consider disordered is always, at least in part, a reflection of who holds power and what serves the status quo. The DSM may offer us some sort of map, but we need to remember who drew it and what they were trying to preserve.
Is it psychosis, or is it a spiritual breakthrough that our culture has no container for?
Is it deep sensitivity moving through a world that demands numbness, or is it emotional instability?
Is it wide-eyed clarity, seeing things as they actually are, or is it depression?
These aren’t rhetorical questions; they’re real distinctions that matter. Instead of being quick to pathologize, I wish we could instead get curious. Because the truth is, behind many DSM diagnoses, there’s a history of trauma—be it personal, historical, ancestral, or institutional. What we call illness may just be the manifestation of unintegrated pain revealing itself as “symptoms.”
Looking through a critical lens at the diagnostic system we’re meant to subscribe to really begs the question: Who is served when we pathologize our pain?
When we turn suffering into disorder—locating the problem inside the person rather than in their circumstances, their relationships, or the systems they’re trying to survive—what are we protecting? And who are we protecting it for?
The truth is, all human behavior exists on a spectrum. The difference between “normal” and “disordered” often comes down to degree, duration, and deviation from an imaginary standard of normalcy and health. A standard that’s based on a White, male, middle-class baseline of stability and privilege that many people never have access to. Anyone who doesn’t fit that standard gets diagnosed, labeled, Othered. Their reasonable responses to unreasonable circumstances get reframed as disorder.
So, what’s there to do with this awareness? My hope is that we’ll use it to start approaching diagnoses as tools for empowerment and self-advocacy, rather than self-definition.
A diagnosis can help you understand how you struggle. It can point you toward resources, connect you with others who share similar experiences, and help you communicate with care providers about the support you need. It can validate that what you’re experiencing is real. But it shouldn’t become who you are.
You are not your diagnosis. You are a whole person moving through a complex life, carrying histories both personal and collective, responding to a world that is often hostile to sensitivity, to difference, to the full spectrum of human experience. And that complex, extraordinary human experience could never be defined by a five-digit code.
