I agree with the overhaul part, but some things need to be categorized so people can be helped.
1+1=2, people with borderline personality disorder have trouble maintaining relationships, people on the spectrum have issues with social cues and empathize differently, and people with dyslexia struggle to read.
Those aren’t good or bad things. They just are. And it’s important we recognize them. These diagnoses doesn’t create the symptoms, the symptoms create the diagnosis. The symptoms are there whether you ignore them or not… and to even be classified as a disorder, something needs to be hindering your life in some way.
My mom always disregarded my worries about being different with “well we’re all a little crazy/different” and I think that was just her way of coping without identifying that she may also need help (psychiatry and psychology and the stigma in general we’re not great in her day). I wish I’d been helped sooner, because the difference between me with medication and me without is absolutely night and day, to the point where anyone that catches me on a day I forget to take my meds is insistent on asking me what’s wrong.
See I don’t agree that these categorizations are capturing anything true in nature though. Its not as if, for example, that there are certain genetic expressions as there are for different colored eyes, where we can look at some genes and say “this and this are off, so this person has borderline personality disorder”, “this and these genes are present, so this person has autism and this other person, adhd”. Without the absence of any such factors, you have to ask, what are these categories actually capturing? The only answers seems to be, that they’re a group of symptoms, and worse still, a group of symptoms as seen by the judgement of a human being, based on the biased storytelling of the participant.
It seems to me, these categorizations are a very simplistic attempt of organizing certain behaviors/characteristics seen in people, by people, but they do not capture at all the why or how someone behaves in a way they do. For example, I think it’s entirely backwards to say someone has issues maintaining a relationship BECAUSE they have borderline personality disorder.
The reasons any one person may have issues with relationships can be a complex multitude of various ordinary factors which could befall any ordinary human being under the same circumstances, not easily present even to a trained psychologist/psychiatrist.
Another criticism I have is that it seems to me that alot of these issues are environmental. For example, I fit all the markers for ADHD. In an environment where I have to sit for 8 hours a day, do things Im not interested, do repetitive tasks for long long term goals, I am absolutely miserable as I have been. I get depressed, I don’t socialize, I can’t make relationships, etc. But as soon as you put me in an environment where I am free to do what I want, challenged with things I find interesting, all of a sudden literally all that flips. I am the most productive social person out there. Under one circumstance if I go to a psychiatrist, I have ADHD/depression/anxiety disorders, and the other I am a model healthy person, or even a manic. What gives? How can two people with the exact same brain, under different environments have opposing diagonses? Can these issues then be said to be disorders of the brain?
I think there is a danger to people categorizing themselves with such terms too, coming to see ALL their behaviors in a certain light because of a diagnosis, and not looking deeper. Oh I can’t do that, because I am ADHD, oh I have social anxiety so I can’t talk to people, etc.
Drugs are powerful, if they work by all means I am not against them.
I agree with the overhaul part, but some things need to be categorized so people can be helped.
1+1=2, people with borderline personality disorder have trouble maintaining relationships, people on the spectrum have issues with social cues and empathize differently, and people with dyslexia struggle to read.
Those aren’t good or bad things. They just are. And it’s important we recognize them. These diagnoses doesn’t create the symptoms, the symptoms create the diagnosis. The symptoms are there whether you ignore them or not… and to even be classified as a disorder, something needs to be hindering your life in some way.
My mom always disregarded my worries about being different with “well we’re all a little crazy/different” and I think that was just her way of coping without identifying that she may also need help (psychiatry and psychology and the stigma in general we’re not great in her day). I wish I’d been helped sooner, because the difference between me with medication and me without is absolutely night and day, to the point where anyone that catches me on a day I forget to take my meds is insistent on asking me what’s wrong.
See I don’t agree that these categorizations are capturing anything true in nature though. Its not as if, for example, that there are certain genetic expressions as there are for different colored eyes, where we can look at some genes and say “this and this are off, so this person has borderline personality disorder”, “this and these genes are present, so this person has autism and this other person, adhd”. Without the absence of any such factors, you have to ask, what are these categories actually capturing? The only answers seems to be, that they’re a group of symptoms, and worse still, a group of symptoms as seen by the judgement of a human being, based on the biased storytelling of the participant.
It seems to me, these categorizations are a very simplistic attempt of organizing certain behaviors/characteristics seen in people, by people, but they do not capture at all the why or how someone behaves in a way they do. For example, I think it’s entirely backwards to say someone has issues maintaining a relationship BECAUSE they have borderline personality disorder.
The reasons any one person may have issues with relationships can be a complex multitude of various ordinary factors which could befall any ordinary human being under the same circumstances, not easily present even to a trained psychologist/psychiatrist.
Another criticism I have is that it seems to me that alot of these issues are environmental. For example, I fit all the markers for ADHD. In an environment where I have to sit for 8 hours a day, do things Im not interested, do repetitive tasks for long long term goals, I am absolutely miserable as I have been. I get depressed, I don’t socialize, I can’t make relationships, etc. But as soon as you put me in an environment where I am free to do what I want, challenged with things I find interesting, all of a sudden literally all that flips. I am the most productive social person out there. Under one circumstance if I go to a psychiatrist, I have ADHD/depression/anxiety disorders, and the other I am a model healthy person, or even a manic. What gives? How can two people with the exact same brain, under different environments have opposing diagonses? Can these issues then be said to be disorders of the brain?
I think there is a danger to people categorizing themselves with such terms too, coming to see ALL their behaviors in a certain light because of a diagnosis, and not looking deeper. Oh I can’t do that, because I am ADHD, oh I have social anxiety so I can’t talk to people, etc.
Drugs are powerful, if they work by all means I am not against them.