Dear Reader,
I am going to warn you… radical view ahead! I value my clients and cherish their experiences and believe It can be disempowering to be “labeled” instead of “seen” and find working with a person instead of their diagnosis a more respectful approach to the care I try to offer. That said let’s talk about diagnosis and the role it can play in mental health care.
The medical model of health care encourages us to notice symptoms of disease and use a term to denote our experience. An example is using the word allergies when referring to the experience of having hives, the throat closing, and itching in response to coming into contact with a substance. Using the word allergies makes it easier to communicate efficiently. The experience of the aforementioned symptoms is not any less real if we use the word chair instead of allergies.
In mental health care we use terms like depression to communicate the presence of a group of symptoms. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) published by the American Psychological Association (APA) is a list of mental health symptoms found to be related to each other. The manual is used by mental health professionals to develop diagnosis to communicate what is going on with others.
Diagnosis is meant to assist in communicating making it easier to have consistent care even if there is a change in treating clinician. In my professional opinion diagnosis can become a trap one falls into when trying to improve one’s life as it is often used to decrease the responsibility one has for making behavior change. It is also used to remove individuality from the therapeutic experience. The step away from individuality can be made by therapist and/or client.
Therapists can remove individuality by having a set of practices used to reduce a client’s experience to a common denominator by referring to them as depressed, bipolar, psychotic etc. Clients can take away their own personal individualities by referring to themselves using similar terms. They may also believe that knowing a diagnosis will bring about understanding of their experience. Labeling something as complex as one’s experience can prevent us from engaging by fostering thinking instead of living.
If you look around my website, you will find that I do use diagnosis to communicate which experiences I have worked with in others. Here I use the diagnosis to make it easier to know a little more about individuals I have had an opportunity to support in their journey towards health and wellness and work but strive to see my clients as unique human beings. As I seek to provide a personalized experience for my clients and believed I can do this best when I connect to them on a heart-to-heart level instead of a label.
Let me know what you think about diagnosis. I would be interested in hearing from you!
Warmly,
Dr. Shyra