Yeah based on my own experience, getting that PTSD label helped me quite a bit. Nothing worse than feeling something strange inside and feeling like you're going crazy and not knowing what it is. A diagnosis gives you comfort. It tells you what to expect, how to treat it, how long it will take, how others responded, etc.

But later I did not like that diagnosis. I had looked at some book about PTSD and the author who was a medical doctor specializing in PTSD had said many people never get better in a significant way despite trying different therapies, that it takes many many years to get better (and other pessimistic things) and I remember having a series of terrible panic attacks after reading that. That diagnosis suddenly became my prison. I kept trying to find articles that would say otherwise and of course I did. On top of that, I had visited a forum where people complained about diagnoses being useless, that doctors who use DSM diagnoses don't care about people and just want to label them so they can drug them and charge people, etc. I can not describe to you how bad I felt.

That was many years ago. At this point I'm not sure how I feel about diagnoses. I think we need them to figure out what to do. But I think we have to be careful that they don't imprison us.