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Ok, mental illness talk today
People get hung up a lot on diagnoses and the DSM, which is kind of backwards. It leads to a lot of other problems, of people looking up diagnoses and thinking "oh, I have all of those." (If you& #39;ve done this, that& #39;s fine)
A lot of us have experienced the symptoms of diagnoses, but don& #39;t get diagnosed with it for a few reasons: 1. Time frames and 2. the "do no harm" question for diagnosticians comes down to a simple question: "do the symptoms bother us"
A lot of the DSM has time frames as a major part of the diagnoses. For example, some diagnoses of bipolar disorder require a two-week period of hypomania. Most definitions of bipolar feature a mania episode and a depressive episode within the same week or "2x/month"
The second part: is it a problem. The common example is someone walks into the office and complains their mood is unstable and they& #39;re hearing voices, but they don& #39;t view the voices as "a problem." A lot of people jump to schizophrenia
(which, btw, a lot of people who hear voices don& #39;t have schizophrenia). But the hearing voices isn& #39;t the problem, the mood disorder is.
The main question that has to be answered is how this affects the elusive "functionality." Does what you& #39;re experiencing harm yourself? Your relationships? Your ability to be independent?
There are plenty of people who have the same problems and it doesn& #39;t affect their "functionality." People who burn bridges sometimes don& #39;t have a problem with doing so, and therefore shouldn& #39;t be diagnosed
Really, the problems are a lot more about the symptoms anyway. Diagnoses are just a constellation of symptoms.
If the symptoms are "I sometimes get into horrendous periods where I have a lot of ideas and can& #39;t sleep," OK, let& #39;s see what we can do to take care of that first. Turns out you& #39;ve been drinking eight cups of coffee a day, can you cut that out?
Diagnoses are a last resort. They& #39;re more or less used only so that the doctors can cite to insurances what the problem is and the insurance company can pay them.
