Labels: What are they good for?

Not a lot actually!!

It’s increasingly obvious to me - and to many of you too I’m sure - that significant efforts are being made to make us feel ‘abnormal’ in some way. We are also being made to accept that such abnormalities are indicative of a specific condition that can be identified and diagnosed by a physician who will give the condition a label of some description!

I know this is a topic I keep writing about. I do this because I feel it is extremely important, if not absolutely essential to our sense of wellbeing that we are aware that the labels given to what are claimed to be ‘mental health problems’ are highly problematic, as are the labels given to ‘physical health problems’.

Before we go any further, please be aware that I am not for a moment denying that people experience a wide variety of symptoms, whether physical or mental, that are the basis for these labels.

What I am saying is that I do not accept the idea that people actually have a mental health disorder - in the same way that I don’t accept the idea that people actually have a physical disease, as I’ve discussed in many of my previous articles.

The reason I say this is because there is no evidence for the existence of distinct conditions that can be diagnosed as specific diseases or as specific mental health ‘disorders’.

In order to discuss ‘disorders’, let’s look at the definition provided by the WHO in their Mental disorders fact sheet,

“A mental disorder is characterized by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotional regulation, or behaviour.  It is usually associated with distress or impairment in important areas of functioning.”

It is more correct to call this a description, rather than an actual definition.

According to the fact sheet, a ‘key fact’ is that,

“There are many different types of mental disorders”

These are the types listed by the WHO:

1. Anxiety Disorders

2. Depression

3. Bipolar Disorder

4. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

5. Schizophrenia

6. Eating Disorders

7. Disruptive behaviour and dissocial disorders

8. Neurodevelopmental disorders

Again, I am not denying that people experience extreme emotions and mental states as the result of stress, trauma and other life events, or as the result of exposures to various toxic substances. What I am proposing, based on my years of research, is that the idea that people can ‘have’ a distinct condition that can be given a definitive label has little to no basis in any genuine science.

The inspiration to return to this topic and dive deeper was a 20th March BBC article entitled James Guy: Olympic swimmer on his late ADHD diagnosis and health anxiety that refers to James as feeling something was ‘not quite right’; the article then states that,

“… life finally began to make sense for Guy as he was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).”

The article continues,

“Looking back now as a double Olympic champion, 28-year-old Guy realises that he was never broken. He was just different.

It is estimated that at least one in seven people in the UK are neurodivergent. This term describes someone who thinks differently because of conditions including autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia and ADHD.

While a diagnosis has helped Guy understand himself, growing up without it took a lasting toll.”

The following is from the WHO fact sheet:

Note the description of ADHD in the above that claims,

“ADHD is characterised by a persistent pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that has a direct negative impact on academic, occupational, or social functioning.”

This is a very rigid and limited characterisation of our functioning as men and women, and children too of course; inattention and hyperactivity occur for many different reasons, such as boredom; it is not the result of a ‘disorder’.

Disturbingly, the BBC article states,

“A diagnosis is not always a neat resolution, as 80% of adults with ADHD have a mental health problem, external at some point in their lifetime.”

Within that sentence in the article is an embedded link to a May 2023 article entitled Mental Health in Adults With ADHD: Examining the Relationship With Cardiorespiratory Fitness that was published in the Journal of Attention Disorders. The fact that there is a journal dedicated to these ‘disorders’ shows the degree of emphasis being placed on this topic, which is why I feel it is vitally important to continue writing about it.

This is an extract from the article:

From all of this, it seems abundantly clear to me that the intention is to foster the perception in us all that there is such a thing as ‘normal’ behaviour and that there is a normal way to function within ‘society’, whether in the education system, the workplace or a social setting, all of which is patently absurd.

Who has determined what is ‘normal’ anyway?

And more to the point: Where is that definition of ‘normal’?

I attempted to look for an answer to this second question and found an article with the interesting title “To Normalize is to Impose a Requirement on an Existence.” Why Health Professionals Should Think Twice Before Using the Term ‘Normal’ With Patients, the abstract of which begins,

“The term “normal” is culturally ubiquitous and conceptually vague. Interestingly, it appears to be a descriptive-normative-hybrid which, unnoticedly, bridges the gap between the descriptive and the normative. People’s beliefs about normality are descriptive and prescriptive and depend on both an average and an ideal.”

I would emphasise that absolutely no living man or woman is the epitome of either the ‘ideal’ or the ‘average’. Therefore, there is no such entity as a ‘normal’ man or woman against whom the rest of us must compare ourselves to determine if and in what context we are different and therefore ‘abnormal’.

One of the main consequences of a diagnosis with an accompanying label is that the ‘condition’ is treatable, as the May 2023 article states,

“The first approach for managing both ADHD and mental illness typically involves pharmacotherapy.”

The purpose of pharmaceuticals is to ‘correct’ a person’s thoughts and behaviours, but these drugs do not have the ability to do this; they cannot restore a person’s mental health, because, as I discussed in my earlier article, Subverting the Young, there is no evidence for the existence of a chemical imbalance in the brain. So the drugs cannot and do not correct any so-called ‘abnormality’ in the brain. But what is extremely disturbing is that there is more than adequate evidence that these drugs cause problems, often of a serious nature.

I acknowledge that, in many cases, people report that they feel they have experienced some relief from their symptoms; but that does not mean the drugs have solved their ‘problem’.

Again, I am aware that there are many manifestations of ‘problems’ that are given labels of mental health conditions and so I can only generalise. However, the main point I wish to emphasise is that ‘feeling different’ is not an inherent fault in a person that needs to be ‘fixed’.

I would argue instead that feeling different is the recognition that we actually are all different, which I regard as a cause for celebration, because each one of us is truly unique; we are not cogs in some matrix machine, nor should we be made to believe that we are.

It is therefore absolutely crystal clear that the medical establishment is trying to force us to feel that each one of us is not a unique being; that we are, or should be, all the same; and that if we feel different then there is something ‘wrong’ with us.

And that is the crux of the issue - the idea that we are, or even can be ‘wrong’ in our thoughts and behaviours. We may not like our thoughts or behaviours or someone else’s for that matter, but that is not because we, or they, have an abnormality that can be diagnosed as a ‘mental health disorder’ for which we, or they, can be drugged until we become ‘normal’.

If, however, we accept the premise that we can think and behave in ways that are ‘wrong’, then we have abrogated our responsibility over our own lives and accepted the idea that ‘others’ have the right to determine how we should behave.

All of which - in my humble opinion - is nothing short of mind control in the form of gaslighting.

One of the reasons for gaslighting us, I would suggest, especially in the light of the last 4 years, is to make us believe that we don’t know what we’re talking about if we don’t agree with the mainstream narrative.

As the extract says, we may even begin to question our own sanity - and this is where the danger lies if we accept the idea that we must have ‘something wrong with us’ that can be diagnosed as a ‘mental health disorder’ for which we can be medicated, possibly for life.

If we fall for the gaslighting, it will stop us from feeling that we can trust ourselves to make our own decisions.

The Psychology Today article suggests that gaslighters have, or may have, a personality disorder, but that is not the focus for me here. My point is for us to recognise that we are being subjected to mass gaslighting and to therefore decide what we can do and what we are prepared to do about it.

I appreciate that many people feel that their labels help them better understand that they are not broken or wrong, as was the case for James Guy in the BBC article; however, I would suggest that these labels nevertheless still limit people and their unique ability to express themselves fully.

I am aware that there are many aspects to this topic and that it is not possible to put it all neatly into one article, so I do plan to return to this topic from different perspectives in future articles. The key point I wish to make is that we are all different and none of us can or should be placed into neat little boxes so we can be seen as ‘normal’. That is a severe limitation on our self-expression.

The solution, I would suggest, is to become aware of the limiting beliefs we hold about ourselves, so that we can fully express ourselves without fear of being labelled ‘abnormal’.