Part of that is just wanting to avoid multi diagnostic dicksizing, but also, it’s because a lot of them plain don’t serve me anymore.
This is interesting, as I've started thinking of mental health diagnoses in terms of "Is it useful?", and thinking about how what constitutes a useful diagnosis depends on circumstances. Social assumptions or judgments, expectations of what a person should be able to do, if and how a person can be punished for not meeting expectations, how access to resources changes based on a diagnosis, etc. all influence whether a diagnosis is useful for a person at a given time.
It's fraught to talk about because when you bring up the socially constructed aspects of mental illness, a lot of people think you're about to tell them "Give up what's keeping you alive right now and put all of your hopes in my utopian vision of the future!" Or worse yet, they're expecting me to tell them that their mental health symptoms will stop existing if they just refuse to believe. But I think genuinely understanding the social aspects behind diagnostic labels can be useful for a lot of people. And it's can be done in ways that aren't about shaming people into giving up treatments that help them.
no subject
This is interesting, as I've started thinking of mental health diagnoses in terms of "Is it useful?", and thinking about how what constitutes a useful diagnosis depends on circumstances. Social assumptions or judgments, expectations of what a person should be able to do, if and how a person can be punished for not meeting expectations, how access to resources changes based on a diagnosis, etc. all influence whether a diagnosis is useful for a person at a given time.
It's fraught to talk about because when you bring up the socially constructed aspects of mental illness, a lot of people think you're about to tell them "Give up what's keeping you alive right now and put all of your hopes in my utopian vision of the future!" Or worse yet, they're expecting me to tell them that their mental health symptoms will stop existing if they just refuse to believe. But I think genuinely understanding the social aspects behind diagnostic labels can be useful for a lot of people. And it's can be done in ways that aren't about shaming people into giving up treatments that help them.