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it’s funny to read tweets about trump being mentally unfit for the presidency, but it’s extremely bothersome and clinically problematic when you think about that more deeply: the idea that people are speculating about someone’s mental health at all.
Diagnostic criteria is not a set of checkboxes that you can count up and then present someone with a diagnosis.
You’re supposed to view those in context with their overall functioning; perhaps the biggest criterion of all is evaluating the degree functional impairment: what is the severity of this set of symptoms, and how does it affect an individuals ability to live their day to day life?
not to mention checking for diagnostic rule-outs or comorbidities. Mental health is so so so much finite complicated than the checkboxes of symptoms you see on your first google search.
This doesn’t even begin to cover the problems with labeling someone with a diagnosis to begin with. diagnoses, which are really just approximations of a system of symptoms with varying degrees of severity, may be too simplistic and categorical.
the real issue with diagnosis, at least in the US, appears to lie with private insurers. You often can’t receive coverage for treatment without an official diagnosis. This forces psychiatrists, who understand that we are so much more complicated, to shoehorn patients...
...into categorical distinctions that may or may not be useful. boundaries between many diagnoses are so incredibly porous. Why is it that many people on the autism spectrum also have ADHD? why do depression and anxiety go hand in hand? the list goes on
TL;DR — from one armchair psychologist to the other: please do not diagnose people you don’t know in real life. and also leave it to the real experts who went to school for over a decade for this. I promise you that your google degree is hilariously insufficient.
