Is a Psychiatric Diagnosis Just Another Name for What You're Feeling? A Rose by Any Other Name.....

The concept of mental illness is at its core about control. When someone is labeled mentally ill, a system including physicians, social workers, and government authorities begins to gain access to her life. People have problems. People have mental or psychological problems. The practice of calling these problems by names reflecting illness and thus putting them into the purview of physicians has been doing harm for decades. It is also demeaning, taking ultimate control from the individual and placing it within their genes or their parents.

I have said it many times and shall say it for as long as I can: there is not a pill for that. Make no mistake, your brain is a biological entity--YOU are a biological entity--thus distress of the mind and emotions are also biological entities, but this does not imply that the only or even the best or even a viable way to solve problems of the mind and emotions is with a pill. The overused "chemical imbalance" theory is dead. On the contrary, psychoactive pills cause chemical imbalances--they change your brain in ways science does not understand, sometimes they alleviate symptoms, but they do not CURE distress.

Thus one danger of calling mental distress a "disease" is that it is then treated as such--you become a patient and you look to a doctor to fix something. This works with appendicitis and broken legs and cancer. It is a fact, however, that not all things clearly within the realm of medical disorders are treatable by medical doctors. In general, there is no treatment for the flu or even the common cold, and physicians are stymied by irritable bowel and migraine. Medical science certainly does not work with depression, anxiety, phobia, PTSD, and the many variations of psychological distress delineated in the various manuals of disease such as the DSM and the ICD, because these are not diseases in the once-commonly understood meaning of the term. These problems do not show demonstrable tissue damage such as a cancer or a stroke, nor do they have symptoms that represent the body fighting a foreign invader, such as cough, fever, runny nose. Rather they have emotions and behaviors as their hallmarks.

How weird is it that one way of diagnosing ADHD is to try a pill and if that works, then the diagnosis fits? What this really means is that there is a behavior someone (not necessarily the individual in question) wants  changed, and there is a pill to reduce that behavior, and someone thinks the reduction of that behavior will be beneficial to the individual. It is debatable whether there is always benefit in reducing the cluster of behaviors we have called ADHD. It also turns out that while it may be the case that for some individuals, reducing the behaviors we have come to label "ADHD" is indeed of benefit, this can be done via psychotherapy and biofeedback, both of which lack the potentially serious side-effects of commonly prescribed ADHD medication (lack of appetite, depressed mood, sleeplessness, loss of creativity, failure to maintain growth patterns compatible with age). By simply calling ADHD a disease in need of medication, we fail to account for individual differences, and potentially do harm to the individuals so labelled.

A similar paradigm applies to anxiety--anxiety is a signal that something is wrong. It is not the case that all anxiety must always be removed via medication.  I submit that it is vitally important to understand the root of this anxiety and assist the individual in achieving a reduction in his discomfort via understanding and changing thoughts and behaviors in such as way as to feel calmer. Anxiety is basically a subset of fear. While in modern times we are rarely in actual fear for our lives, modern life has many stressors--job stress, school stress, health stress, financial stress, traumatic stress. Applying a pill to the results of these stressful situations is not a solution, and it is certainly not a cure. You are anxious for a reason, and you need to learn about this reason and either remove the distress or change yourself accordingly--which might mean anything from thinking differently to moving out of a dangerous environment. When we diagnose anxiety as if it is a disease, we neglect the vital information about the state of the individual struggling with the anxiety.

The answer thus to the title question is yes, these diagnostic labels  speak to something very real. On the other hand, the use of such labels leads us down the wrong path to helping you, the client, feel better. So they are not "just" another label; rather any one of them is a misleading and potentially dangerous and stigmatizing label.  It is all too easy to become trapped in the language of illness; "I have depression" or "I am depressed" rather than, "I feel depressed" or even "I have been feeling depressed for a long time".

Describing your distress as a temporary state rather than a fact of your existence can be very liberating and allows you to focus on the potential for change. Remember that stress is a motivator to change. It is hard to change when you are feeling anxious or depressed or in pain, but that is the time when even a small change in how you think or act can make a significant difference. Try something silly right now--pull your face into the biggest smile you can and observe what happens. Change your posture--sit up straighter if you are slouched--slouch if you were sitting straight--observe your inner state. Small changes can easily lead to bigger ones.

Taking mental distress out of the realm of illness and disease is not meant to belittle or disregard your very real pain. The point is to empower you to take control of your discomfort and regain control of your life, rather than submitting yourself as a patient to the experiment that is modern psychiatry.
   

https://www.madinamerica.com/2019/06/critique-diagnostic-terminology/?fbclid=IwAR3UusuWWcB_9tOTlscZd8fNvk8xTixGiJs0RZjm7VzJ5TvhKsS9abiwT0k

Szasz, T.E. (2011). The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct. Harper Collins.