Gemma Spake

Overdiagnosis though has its own risks too.

It can pathologize ordinary human variation without meaning to.

It can pull attention away from the context that we're in that may be describing why more people are having severe symptoms.

And it can sometimes lead people towards explanations or treatments that don't actually fit the full picture of them as a person.

And that can really blur the line between mild difficulty and profound impact.

And when that happens, diagnostic language can start to lose some of its meaning.

So I don't think it's necessarily better to do either.

I think that the real goal here is to diagnose well and diagnose carefully, contextually, and with room for an evolving understanding of a person, not just a label.

Like,

who is this person?

Rather than seeing them as having this or that, who are they?

What are they going through?

What language do they need, label or otherwise?

But then what

What help do they need as well?

Remember, like labels, diagnoses are just clusters of symptoms or patterns of functioning.

They do not describe a person entirely.

If you have met one person who has ADHD, one person who has autism, OCD, BPD, anxiety, depression, whatever it may be, you have met one person who is experiencing that.

Just one.

Because it's always going to be different.