I feel everything has pros and cons so even with psychiatric diagnosis I suppose there are experiences and incidents which justify its importance but also question its relevance. Psychiatric diagnosis processes carried on a common framework with clearly laid criteria on one hand are useful as a common framework lays the ground for the professionals to diagnose well and the criteria are general for all. But it's also problematic at the same time as generalization becomes an issue when I think about cultural factors and familial environment. Not a very psychological example but the first time I heard about 'Mata chadhna' in the Hindu culture I really viewed it as an abnormal and spiritual way of defining some foolish acts, so imagine the horror the same kind of bias can bring into a clinical setting. So generalization or a common framework might work only if we take in regard sensitive and other relevant aspects.

Another issue I have personally felt a lot is that professionals are only interested to know the atypical, abnormal, different and uncommon things the person might be doing. To explain my point in a better way I'll tell about an experience I had while I visited a government hospital psychiatry department, the doctor was interviewing the person and it was his second session and the client was telling and describing various experiences he had but the psychiatrist was so keen on terming those statements and incidents to make it easier for them to categorise the person into particular diagnostic criteria.

The person started off with a goof-up he had made while at work and how he was anxious about losing his job and this thought led to fear of his kids being thrown out of school.

Now this entire narrative was reduced down by the psychiatrist to "Accha ghabrahat hoti hai aapko". Personally to me, this simplified statement didn't do enough justice to how self-aware he was about his duty at work and his responsibility as a father. Psychiatry diagnosis focuses only on the so-called negative aspects but doesn't take in regard the things that a person has in congruence with the so-called 'normal people'. This simplified approach of just counting on the negative and atypical aspects to put the client under a label seems insensitive to me. As mental health professionals we must at least recognise the aspects of the client more than the symptoms, we must see that humans are more than just patients with some abnormal symptoms.

Eventually, all this also leads to terming and labelling because categorising and fitting the client into criteria becomes important which leads to discounting the person's subjective experience and feeling towards a thing. As after this session with the client there was an informal discussion between the junior and senior psychiatrist where the junior psychiatrist was describing about the incidents and behavioural aspects portrayed by the client, but what I noticed was the junior psychiatrist who had taken the interview was just putting forward things having a symptomatic relation to a particular disorder only because they wanted to start with an appropriate treatment she was only mentioning about "Haan bol rha hai ki koi control kr rha h ghabrahat hoti h mujhe yeh delusion hi lg rha h". I understand how it is crucial for the psychiatrist or therapist to know what the client is dealing with and give a quick solution based on their issue, but what felt irrelevant to me was considering that this was just the second session jumping to conclusions based on few statements is not justifiable just for the sake of categorising a person. I personally have felt professionals get a sense of relief and achievement when they can fit a client into a category. The feeling of ambiguity or not being able to fit into categories makes the professionals a little anxious. So this rigid structure has made the mental health area just a checklist for categorising people ignoring all other aspects.

But this same aspect can also be an advantage in some way for the family and the client. I know a close relative who was diagnosed with Bipolar 1 disorder in 2018. In 2016 he had suffered a major loss in business and had a downfall since then he started to experience depression( which was not known diagnosed) so all the family members used to take all his atypical behavior as "Voh dukhi hai loss hua isliye but he'll be fine" but whenever this depressive behaviour went too extreme people around him actually acted insensitively and used to make harsh statements and even act as critiques who are helping him to give advice. But I felt all of this made everything worse for him and then by the end of 2017 when there were a lot of "weird changes" in him he was actually taken to a psychiatrist. That's when he was diagnosed with Bipolar 1 and having a phase of depressive mood before it. After he now is categorised into a label of being "psychologically unwell" people around him accept his deviant behaviour in a better way. Once the client had actually tried to hurt his wife with a knife when he was in his manic period but after the medicines were given and his symptoms were a little less severe wife didn't bring in that incident or ever refer to it, had this incident occurred without a diagnosis he might have actually been accused of domestic violence.

The negative aspect I also saw from this experience was that at times he was not taken seriously because the family members used to say very insensitive statements like " Ignore kro bipolar wla mood chaalu h iska abhi". So the diagnosis comes with either of the two outcomes.

I might have a very limited exposure to all of this but from whatever I have experienced, what I can say it's mixed. Because after all working with humans we can't expect idealistic and flawless ways or results.

.    .    .