08/03/2022
I am human!
I’ve noticed a lot of these type of posts recently on social media…
5 signs you might be x, y, z
Sometimes using mental health diagnoses, vaguely mental health terminology or just random categories.
Diagnosing any mental health condition is not easy, and needs to be done by a specialist, carefully considering the person’s context, history and presentation, the meaning of the diagnosis for the person and how helpful or not it will be to them.
Mental illness Diagnoses in itself is also an interesting concept with a huge amount of debate around it. Some people find them useful, some people find them meaningless and there are many different viewpoints in between. There is huge debate about the validity, reliability and utility of mental health diagnoses, and whether they are actually separate categories at all. There’s also debate about whether at times they pathologise normal human experiences, such as distress and grief. That is not to undermine any diagnoses people have received, because this is the current categorisation we use to understand mental Ill health and many services and professionals work within this model.
So if you find yourself self diagnosing multiple things because of these type of posts,
Remember diagnosing mental health difficulties is never this easy. Social media loses all nuance and consideration when it come to categorising mental health concerns and many of the categories you will see online are also totally made up and aren’t actually diagnoses at all! I sometimes read these posts and think- aren’t they just describing the human experience?
Of course if you do have concerns about your mental health, please speak to your GP or a mental health professional.
Thanks to and .martha.psychologist for helping me complete this list about human nature.