The language of poor mental health is inescapable. Diagnostic terms like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) permeate popular culture and the web world. They are the currency of countless news and awareness campaigns.
Growth diagnostic labels might be celebrated. This suggests that public awareness of mental health is increasing, and the stigma related to mental illness is decreasing. As the shame related to it decreases, mental illness is coming out of the shadows.
But the rise of diagnostic language could have its drawbacks. Some critics say it reflects medicalization of suffering and possibly contribute to excessive medication intakeAnd just as naming conditions can reduce stigma, it can increase it. Labels can be sticky, having a long-lasting impact on how others judge individuals with mental illness and the way they see themselves.
IN recent studyMy colleagues and I checked out how labeling an individual’s relatively mild or marginal mental health problems affects how others perceive them.
We found that the presence of labels increased empathy and concern for those affected, but in addition pessimism about their ability to get well. In general, diagnostic labels appear to be a mixed blessing when applied on the less severe end of the spectrum of suffering.
Spread of the concept
When we talk concerning the growth of diagnostic labels, a specific concern is that the concepts of mental illness have been expanding in recent years. They now encompass a wider range of experiences than before. The so-calledcreep concept“means that individuals can use diagnostic terms to consult with relatively mild or marginal phenomena.
British psychologist Lucy Foulkes says people may increasingly over identification mental illness. This signifies that they apply diagnostic labels to experiences that don’t meet the diagnostic threshold.
The latest research (including those from my research group) support this possibility. These studies have shown that individuals who hold broad conceptions of mental illness are more more likely to self-diagnose than those with narrower conceptions.
The consequences of using diagnostic terms loosely are unclear. Using them to label relatively mild suffering can have positive effects, corresponding to encouraging people to take their suffering seriously and seek skilled help.
But it can have equally negative effects, stigmatizing the person being labeled or resulting in the person being defined and limited by the disease. It can even result in people misdiagnosing themselves.
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Our research
We sought to grasp the impact of those expanded conceptions of mental illness by examining how diagnostic labeling affects the perceptions of individuals experiencing relatively mild problems.
In two experiments, we presented nearly 1,000 American adults with transient descriptions of a hypothetical person experiencing a marginal, nonsevere mental health problem. Each description was rigorously tested to be near the diagnostic threshold.
Participants were randomly assigned to read equivalent descriptions, with or with no diagnostic label (major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and bipolar disorder in experiment one, and PTSD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and binge eating disorder in experiment two).
After reading each description, we asked participants to rate how much they felt sorry for the person, how much they’d need to be treated professionally, and the way much they need to receive accommodations in school or work, corresponding to additional time on assignments or special leave.
We also asked how likely it was that the person would make a full recovery (each experiments) and the way much control that they had over their problems (experiment two). We then compared these judgments between the labeled and unlabeled conditions.
Labels had an impact
Participants who read descriptions preceded by a diagnostic label tended to report more empathy for the person and more support for efforts to regulate to their problems. They also viewed the person as more suitable for treatment than those who read the identical descriptions without the label.
At the identical time, the presence of labeling made participants perceive the person’s problems as more everlasting and perceive their recovery as a process less depending on them.
Many of those judgments varied across disorders. There was some evidence that labeling effects were strongest for lesser-known disorders corresponding to binge eating and bipolar disorder.
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Mixed Blessings
When diagnostic labels are applied to marginal cases of mental illness, the implications appear to be mixed. On the one hand, labels legitimize help-seeking, promote responsive support, and enhance empathy. These positives contradict suggestions that labeling promotes stigmatization.
However, diagnostic labels also appear to encourage the view that mental health problems are everlasting and that individuals have limited options for overcoming them. In other words, diagnostic labels can lead people to see mental illness as a everlasting identity fairly than a brief state. Such a perception can undermine expectations of recovery in those experiencing problems and undermine efforts to realize it.
Even the apparent advantages of labeling can have a downside in the context of relatively mild anxiety. It can encourage unnecessary and ineffective treatment or perpetuate a “sick” role by offering special facilities to individuals with minor disabilities.
Our findings make clear the possible consequences of the continued expansion of diagnostic concepts. As these concepts spread to less severe types of suffering and impairment, and diagnostic labels are used more loosely, we have to be alert to the likely costs in addition to advantages.