Labels are handles on reality

But handles are not doors

It’s my job to label people.

That’s not how I like to think about it, but that’s how patients sometimes see the diagnoses doctors give them: like we’ve slapped a sticker on them that says, “Dangerous! Don’t touch!” And I get that. There’s been great progress in the public perception of mental illness, but there’s still a lot of negativity compared to physical health problems. Depression still gets taken less seriously than diabetes. And it’s worse with a diagnosis like schizophrenia, which people sometimes react to like they’ve been cursed.

Not everyone experiences a diagnosis so negatively, though, even in psychiatry. For some, a diagnosis is liberating: the realisation that a combination of symptoms that felt random and disconnected and strange actually has a name, is actually known, and there’s something that can be done about it. For people like that, the diagnosis is still a label, but in this case, it’s a label for something they were afraid didn’t have one.

Labels are not the issue. The issue is us, and how we use labels.

Which brings us to Procrustes and his bed.

A gruesome Greek legend

You may have heard of him, but just in case you haven’t, here’s the lowdown. Procrustes…