The psychiatric branch of medicine has a guide called the DSM. It is updated to keep up with the times periodically.The guidelines outlined within those pages are supposed to aid
doctors in prescribing the proper drug or therapy for recovery. All this is fine. Regular doctors do tests so they write the correct antibiotic. Their patients are labeled with an infection and hopefully cured within a short amount of time. What of those with diseases listed in the DSM?
The manual is broken down into groups of maladies and further into subcategories. The book is their Bible. Without it, fewer
labels might be used. There is nothing wrong with diagnosising someone with personality disorder or acute depression. They have to start somewhere with treatment. Doctors take blood and xrays. Psychiatrists and pschologists evaluate based on interviews. Can any harm from
persons being labeled with an emotional or
mental condition?
To answer that one must coinsider the results. A few decades back six teams were
sent to psychiatric facilities under the assumption they were hearing voices and other symptons listed in the then DSM3. Their job was to get out. At the end, they all did with labels ranging from schiophrenia to bipolar disorder.
Each facility was then informed the real status of those "patients". When they learned the people were professionals, shock took over. In a couple of cases probably anger too. They were then told another group would be passing through. No other persons were sent. The places began to look for healthy persons. An amazing thing happened.
All the doctors involved were less quick to label their patients with any maladies. Suddenly putting a moniker on someone made less sense. Society tends to believe once a person has a diagnosis they can not recover to normalcy. Certain conditions will not be cured. A few become even criminal in nature.
The bottom line here is before calling one a name think of the results. Girls
considered loose get bad reputations. Some members of certain races get blamed for much they never did. People with mental or emotional conditions are forever considered bananas or wacky. People can be cruel enough with their words without any help from bad labels. The time to treat others as we wish to be be treated is yesterday.
More abstracts about the eternal labeling