Diagnoses and Labels
'Diagnoses' are very compelling, especially when we have invested our collective belief in them. We tend to put enormous faith in diagnoses and labels. Of course they have their usefulness as they give us something tangible and defined to work with from a conventional medical point of view. However, it helps to view them in their correct perspective and question the power we have given them.
Diagnoses are agreed upon labels applied by a person or group of people who are deemed authorities in the medical field. They are applied to observed repeated patterns of symptoms and signs and their physiological and biochemical correlates. This is for the greater ease of dealing with the observed health related phenomena by reaching a consensus. However, we have this tendency to squeeze all manner of human physical and emotional experiences into the medical model that is sanctioned by our society and apply labels where sometimes labels are better left alone.
Once the diagnoses are agreed upon, and get a grip in the collective consciousness, they are thereafter considered sacrosanct and absolute. The labels develop a life of their own. We just believe in them and have unquestionable faith in those who instigate and apply them. We forget that diagnoses are never absolute, though we commonly treat them as though they are. The diagnoses are not separate from the minds that create them and nature is not going to comply by always reproducing the exact replica of that to which we have given a label. Though we consider diagnoses to be completely objective, there are always subjective factors regarding their application and how they play out in the individual.
"It is much more important to know what sort of patient has the disease than what sort of disease a patient has." - William Osler
We give much power to the label and labels have a habit of drawing to them what is expected from them. The unwitting expectation is that the person conforms to the applied diagnosis rather than the other way around. The predictions of how diagnoses of illnesses are expected to play out have become entrenched in our collective belief systems, and often ignore the multitude of other variables that a particular individual might be subject to regarding illness outcome. Our agreed-upon expectations, which fit nicely into our belief systems, can have a potent influence on how an illness might unfold in an individual.
Particularly regarding psychiatric diagnoses, useful though they can be, the risk is that the application of a well-defined diagnosis can easily ignore the underlying wounding that might remain unaddressed and therefore further suppressed. This is because it is uncomfortable for society to address its own shadow. It goes against our collective 'idealised self' to admit that such wounding exists, and is actually rife, in our society. It is much easier in the short term to think that 'genetics' (outdated though that concept is!) is the main cause and just deal with the manifestations, while holding the real causation at arm's length. It is much neater to categorise than open that proverbial collective and individual can of worms.
As said, diagnoses have their usefulness as they give us something defined to work with. People are often relieved when a diagnosis is applied as it gives some recognition and validation of their health challenges - and hope that if there is a diagnosis there might also be a cure, or at least some sort of solution. But the risk is handling over one's power and expecting that the illness will unfold according to the dictates of our medical culture, and society at large, when that label is applied.
It pays to have some flexibility regarding diagnoses and view them as guidelines rather than being absolute in and of themselves. It helps to view ourselves as unique individuals and take on only what is helpful from our medical culture, while steering our own ships regarding projected illness outcomes.
Dr Catherine Fyans is a holistic medical practitioner/conscious health facilitator and the author of The Wounding of Health Care: From Fragmentation to Integration