According to some psychiatrists and mental health professionals in the United States, the current system of diagnosing and labeling mental health disorders may need to be re-evaluated because they feel that the current way of diagnosing patients (specifically via DSM) is overly rigid, focused heavily on symptoms without any consideration for how a person experiences their mental illness; therefore, they feel that such an approach does not allow clinicians to provide the best treatment possible for patients.
In addition, many clinicians have voiced their belief that the best way to classify patients with “multiple” diagnoses should not typify patients by labels (like Anxiety, Bipolar Disorder, Touch Phobia… etc) but rather focus on the dimension(s) (i.e. mood, stress response, perception) that each patient is operating in at any given moment when making diagnoses. Lastly, some mental health professionals warn that making these proposed changes too quickly to the diagnosis and labelling of a mental health disorder will hinder research, impair access, and eliminate legal rights for patients seeking mental health services.
Mental health issues affect more than just the individual who has the problem; it also affects their family. The words we use to define someone’s mental health may either help them or be stigmatizing. When someone has a mental health issue and receives a diagnosis, that means they think about themselves and their diagnosis in a different way than before they had a diagnosis. In this situation, an individual may feel more understood because of his/her diagnosis, but will have a fear of being “labeled” by others or being judged because of their mental health issue. Many individuals are advocating for a change in how mental health issues are identified and diagnosed by including the individual’s lived experience, culture, and how to work collaboratively between a family member and the individual who has a mental health issue.
In the future, there will be task forces and research groups studying various pieces of evidence regarding mental health diagnoses – to include brain research, genetic research, and digital research-data – in order to establish a more fluid mental health diagnostic system. Experts in this field recognize that any changes to the way mental health diagnoses are utilized must maintain the principles of compassion, access, and equity.
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