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've done this, that's fine)

A lot of us have experienced the symptoms of diagnoses, but don'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're hearing voices, but they don't view the voices as "a problem." A lot of people jump to schizophrenia

(which, btw, a lot of people who hear voices don't have schizophrenia). But the hearing voices isn'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're experiencing harm yourself? Your relationships? Your ability to be independent?

There are plenty of people who have the same problems and it doesn't affect their "functionality." People who burn bridges sometimes don't have a problem with doing so, and therefore shouldn'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't sleep," OK, let's see what we can do to take care of that first. Turns out you've been drinking eight cups of coffee a day, can you cut that out?

Diagnoses are a last resort. They'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.

This isn't to say whatever you've been diagnosed with, for anyone reading this, isn't real. The symptoms are real. Whatever course of action you've taken to address those symptoms has hopefully worked. That's the concern.

The diagnoses are sometimes helpful to put a name to what you're experiencing, but that's about it.