Quote:
Originally Posted by Perna
I do not have anything against self diagnosis; I think we know ourselves better than someone else can and don't need a profession to tell us we are "anxious" or "depressed", etc. Diagnoses are used by professionals to help a patient/client, prescribe the right meds, or know what direction to work in but I don't know that self diagnoses can help/hurt more than professional ones or that professional ones are necessarily necessary  ...I think most mental health diagnoses are based on questions asked us about ourselves and I think we can come to some of the same conclusions as a professional, with regards to most mental health questions. |
Agreed. While I do understand some of the objections people have to it, I don't think it's all that accurate to compare diagnosing yourself with a physical condition, which is usually based on some kind of objective test, such as a scan or the testing of a blood sample, with diagnosing yourself with a mental disorder, which is based on what you're feeling or experiencing. I think people who recognize themselves in descriptions of mood or anxiety disorders, for example, quite often
are onto something.
That said, it's best not to jump at the first explanation available, to realize that the same symptoms can have a number of different explanations, and to be open to new information and the possibility you're mistaken. Seems to me some of these harmful self-diagnoses mentioned here could have been avoided if people had done that. (And it's not like professionals never err in these same ways...)