Mental Health Diagnoses: Understanding the Value and Limits
Mental health diagnoses play a powerful role in how we understand ourselves and others. For some, receiving a diagnosis can feel like a light being switched on: “Finally, there’s a name for what I’ve been experiencing.” For others, it can feel restrictive, confusing, or even shameful. Like many tools in mental health care, diagnoses are neither inherently good nor bad – their impact depends on how they’re used, understood, and held.
Why Mental Health Diagnoses Matter
One of the most important benefits of a mental health diagnosis is validation. When someone has struggled silently with their thoughts, emotions, or behaviors, having a professional acknowledge that those experiences are real and recognized can be deeply relieving. A diagnosis can reduce self-blame, replacing, “What’s wrong with me?” with “This is something people experience and support exists for it.”
Diagnoses also create a shared language. They allow clinicians to communicate with one another, guide evidence-based treatment, and help individuals access appropriate support, accommodations, or medication. In practical terms, diagnoses often determine eligibility for therapy, insurance coverage, workplace adjustments, or academic support.
For many people, a diagnosis can also foster a deeper, heartfelt understanding for their internal world. Learning about a condition may help someone recognize the specific patterns, cues/triggers, and needs, empowering them to make changes and advocate for themselves more effectively.
The Drawbacks and Risks
Despite these benefits, mental health diagnoses also have limitations that are important to acknowledge.
One significant risk is over-identification. When a diagnosis becomes a person’s primary identity, it can unintentionally shrink their sense of self: “I am bipolar, I am anxious, I am borderline (BPD).” While diagnoses describe experiences, they do not define the whole person. Over-identification can limit hope, reinforce helplessness, or make people feel trapped by a label.
There is also the issue of stigma. Although awareness has improved, many diagnoses still carry social judgments. People may be treated differently by employers, family members, or even healthcare providers once a label is applied. In some cases, individuals internalize these stigmas, seeing themselves as “broken” or “difficult” rather than human beings responding to life circumstances.
Another concern is misdiagnosis or over-diagnosis. Mental health is complex, culturally influenced, and deeply contextual. Symptoms can overlap across conditions, change over time, or be shaped by trauma, stress, or systemic factors. A diagnosis made too quickly, or without sufficient understanding of someone’s background, can lead to inappropriate treatment or missed underlying issues.
Finally, diagnoses can sometimes medicalize normal human experiences. Sadness, fear, grief, anger, and stress are part of being human. While these experiences can become overwhelming and require support, not all distress fits neatly into diagnostic categories.
Holding Diagnoses Lightly
Perhaps the most helpful way to approach mental health diagnoses is to see them as tools, not truths. They are maps, not the territory. A diagnosis can guide care and understanding, but it should never replace compassion and curiosity about the individual or overshadow their lived experience.
Good mental health care balances diagnostic knowledge with compassion, flexibility, and collaboration:
It asks not only: “What diagnosis fits?”
But also: “What has this person been through? What do they need right now? What gives their life meaning?”
** For additional insights, refer to Gabor Maté’s book, The Myth of Normal and his “Compassionate Inquiry” approach.
Moving Forward
Mental health diagnoses can open doors, but they should never close them. When used thoughtfully, they can validate suffering, guide healing, and reduce isolation. When used rigidly or uncritically, they can constrain identity (i.e. shaming and shamefulness) and overlook the complexity of human experience.
Ultimately, we are more than our diagnoses. They may describe aspects of our struggles, but they can overlook our broader stories, inclusive of our strengths and our capacity for growth.
My hope is that as you navigate your own mental health journey, qualities of compassion and curiousity will open up for the parts that make up your internal system, and that they’ll experience a deeper sense of healing and transformation because of it.
Notes
Photo by Marcel Strauß on Unsplash
Gabor Mate, The Myth of Normal