Friday, 14 May 2010

What use is a label?

A diagnosis of mental illness has as much meaning for prognosis, i.e.
for outcomes and life course, as being black or male or anything other
descriptor. The diagnosis holds relevance for communication, so a
bipolar person could be called an "upper and downer, or someone
suffering from depression could be described as "visiting Grimbsy" as a
friend of mine described it. Those are necessary terms for communication
just like black, white, pink or green are terms that could be used to
describe skin colour. Admittedly green would have a high degree of
significance for a human beings.

Mental illness is not an illness and this is becoming more obvious with
the relabelling of the labels by the politically correct sorority. After
the antipsychiatry movement exposed the fallacy in the 1970s psychiatry
upped the quality of scientific rigour that supported the idea of mental
illness however as the science advanced it became more and more obvious
that many of the conditions were not, in fact, illnesses in the same way
that being gay, or black or whatever isn't an illness but can have
affect the 'prognosis' or life course of an individual.

Does that make sense? Or do I need to simplify it even further?

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We It comes in part from an appreciation that no one can truly sign their own work. Everything is many influences coming together to the one moment where a work exists. The other is a begrudging acceptance that my work was never my own. There is another consciousness or non-corporeal entity that helps and harms me in everything I do. I am not I because of this force or entity. I am "we"