Sunday, March 23, 2008

The Importance (or lack thereof) of Diagnoses

One of the kickers about my journey with mental illness has been the reaction that everyone wants to figure out what label I should wear, me included. As a result, I have quite a list; Borderline Personality, OCD, Obsessive Compulsive Personality, Bulimia, Anorexia, ED-NOS, Major Depression, Panic Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder. As far as I can tell, that list is useless. That's not to say diagnoses are useless, far from it. Sometimes the MH professionals get scared when they meet someone they cannot figure out; that's almost everyone they meet. So we end up with a list of diagnoses, as though that solves the problems, as though explaining by naming works well. It does not. Carl Rogers did not come up with a taxonomy of diagnoses in his psychological theory because he felt the list would distract from the real issues. He is very right in that regard.

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