Is it possible that diagnosis and mental healthcare create part of the social disability associated with severe mental illness?

There's a moment in my life which is really significant and I'm thinking about now.

It was the interview with the first psychiatrist I saw. It was at the age of 15. I barely remember it or consider it. She judged me sane. Instead of being sectioned and told I was mentally ill I retained my freedom but briefly ended up in a children's home then a foster home.

Instead of being confined to a ward I was able to continue going to school while in a children's home. I was able to revise and take my GCSE exams, something impossible for a child under section.

I wasn't told I was mentally ill so didn't have to deal with all the shit which comes with a diagnosis. I was removed from my safe environment and put in a place with no distractions. All I had to do was revise. I didn't even have enough money to go to a secondhand bookshop and buy a book to read. I had to save from the small allowance the home gave me, whatever was left from any attempts at theft from other children in the home. Thankfully it was a pretty good home in that respect.

Had I been in a ward I wouldn't have been able to take my exams. I'd have lost the opportunity to take them and had to take them the year after. That's very hard. It may never have happened, least of all when I have to deal with a system telling me I'm ill.

Instead of losing the life chances created by education I did very well for someone in a children's home. While at university I dropped out for a year but managed to take my exams. Lots of people who drop out of uni for a year find it very hard to finish their degree but I managed that too, just.

Had I not got excellent grade it'd have been a lot harder, nigh on impossible, to have gotten into the boarding school I went to at sixth form. I wouldn't have got the opportunity to join the highly selective Year in Industry scheme for budding "captains of industry in 20 years time" nor would I have gained entry to what was then a top 5 UK university to study one of the toughest degrees.

All because after i'd been thrown out of home for being unbearable the psychiatrist decided I was sane for behaving as I did, or at least wasn't a risk to myself or others.

Thank fuck eh? My life outcomes could have so easily fitted those of other people with severe mental illness presenting in childhood. Thankfully my family protected me from the psychiatric system and the first psychiatrist I saw, for whatever reason, chose not to label me mentally ill.