No, mental disorders are not adjectives

Psychology and psychiatry are often criticized for reducing people to labels. That is, by try to explain what makes us unique, the mind and our own personality, through numbers, statistical trends and categories relatively rigid.

Of course, if we look back at the past, it is easy to see the consequences of what the lack of empathy and humane treatment can do in psychiatry and in the scientific study of behavior: lobotomies forced, crowding in psychiatric centers that could hardly be called that ...

However, neither in psychology nor in medicine is it necessary to confuse the person with their illnesses or mental problems in order to work in these areas. Neither are mental disorders adjectives nor is the function of psychology or medicine to translate our essence through a diagnosis.

The use of labels in psychology

Something needs to be clarified: the use of well-defined categories (or as narrow as possible) in psychology, such as that of psychopathy or intelligence, it is not something that is bad in itself.

Psychology tries to scientifically explain a part of reality and, for this, must use concrete concepts, that can be understood by the entire community of scientists in that area of ​​knowledge regardless of their cultural context.

In other words, in science it is necessary to avoid ambiguous definitions as much as possible; you have to speak properly. The depression cannot be defined as "a state of mental negativity in which pessimism is transmitted vital ", but to understand what it consists of, it is necessary to learn a series of very concrete and established by scientific consensus.

That is, psychology works from concepts that tell us about characteristics of how we think, feel and act from the point of view from the point of view of an external observer who compares different cases with each other and reaches conclusions about how a group of people thinks, feels and acts individuals. The task of psychology is not to define what exists only in a person, but to discover the logics that allow us to explain the mental and behavioral mechanisms of a multitude.

That means that a psychologist does not treat a person as if they were totally and absolutely unique, but rather that works from the principles and generalities about the human mind and behavior that known. In fact, if not, his work could be done by anyone who attributes a special sensitivity to being "a human soul touching another human soul."

Psychology is not metaphysical

The problem comes when either the patients or the psychologists and psychiatrists themselves believe that the scientific categories used in psychology and psychiatry are direct reflections of people's identity. That is, when the names of mental disorders, personality traits or symptoms become synonymous with the essence of people (whatever the latter is).

It is one thing to agree that by pragmatism we are going to work based on well-defined and well-defined concepts, and another is assume that the entire mental life of someone is summarized in a diagnostic picture or in the result of a test of personality. This last option is not only not part of the normal functioning of psychology, but it is also an overreach.

The error is that, at times, the belief is held that the task of psychology is to capture the identity and essence of people, tell us who we are.

However, as much as the etymology of the term "psychology" is that which isThe purpose of this scientific and intervention field is much more modest than that of revealing the essence of each one; that task is reserved for metaphysicians.

Psychology is content to be useful in providing concrete solutions to material needs: to improve the objective living conditions of the people, provide models capable of better anticipating how collectives act, etc.

That is why the idea of ​​mental disorders and mental disorders, unlike adjectives, They only exist because they are useful within the framework of coordinated efforts that is mental health and behavioral science, and for nothing else. They are concepts that make sense in the clinical field and in certain branches of science to respond to specific problems.

In mental health there are no essences

Furthermore, it is worth remembering that in psychology almost all mental processes are understood as part of a cycle. that unites the person with their environment: we act according to what is happening within our own organism, but what happens inside our body also depends on what happens around us.

Even from a scientific perspective, a mental disorder cannot be understood as something that begins and ends in oneself, as if it were part of something intrinsic to oneself. Each person maintains a connection in real time with their environment and it could not exist (neither alive nor dead) apart from it.

This idea, by the way, would not only be good to take into account when thinking about diagnostic concepts, but also when you think in terms that are used as adjectives beyond health mental.

Disorders as labels

Asking a mental health specialist to capture the essence of a patient through a diagnosis is like asking a gardener to express the roseness of the rose through pruning.

Scientific categories such as those that serve to explain what mental disorders are they only make sense as part of an effort to provide solutions to very specific needs, defined and based on the material, and they do not have it as labels that can be used to summarize all the complexity of the personality of a single individual. That is not its function.