Member-only story
Whom Does a Psychiatric Diagnosis Say Something About?
Hint, it is not about the “patient”
Well. It isn’t about the receiver of them… Psychiatric diagnoses say something about the society we live in, and the systems we have created within it. And about the people dishing them out as if they were gifts…
Psychiatry and psychiatric diagnoses are a part of our western culture. And we do our best to export this culture to the rest of the world.
And isn’t it interesting how we have come together to decide that we want to see people through the lens of illness? We judge people by how mentally sane or insane they seem, according to a specific set of rules we have come up with (to be found in the DSM and ICD catalogues of “mental disorders”).
The so-called “mental illnesses/disorders” in the DSM and the ICD are basically lists of stress and trauma responses. But it has all been given an air of science/medicine and is presented as facts and proof of “mental illnesses.”
I have met some people who talk about “seeing the other” and “listening to the “patient/client” — but still think diagnosing them with so-called “mental…
