100 Quotes About Diagnosis

Categories make for efficient communication and statistical recordkeeping. They also satisfy the human lust for making things seem simpler than they are. We have been trying to map the landscape of mental disorders by drawing lines around clusters of symptoms as if they were island, but mental disorders are more like ecosystems...defying crisp boundaries.

But why bother with diagnoses at all, if a diagnosis is but a restatement of the problem?

Being made for each other is a diagnosis.

We were decades, still, from a time when a simple Google search would bring up a head-spinning array of charts, statistics, and medical explainers that either gave or took away hope.

Nobody knew how long my father had been feeling poorly before he first took himself to the doctor, but my guess is it had already been months if not years. He didn't like medical appointments. He wasn't interested in complaining. He was the sort of person who accepted what came and just kept moving forward.

All my memories of my father include some manifestation of his disability, even if none of us were quite willing to call it that yet. What I knew at the time was that my dad moved a bit more slowly than other dads. I sometimes saw him pausing before walking up a flight of stairs, as if needing to think through the maneuver before actually attempting it.

It is no wonder that I had tears of relief, to find out, finally, the truth - to discover an explanation, a diagnosis that explained not one or two of my symptoms or behaviours but ALL of them. Finally, someone saw me

Spiritual matters can often masquerade themselves in natural patterns of behavior. For example, unbelief disguises itself as skepticism and procrastination.

- A więc, panie doktorze - odezwała się trochę za głośno, radosnym, zdecydowanym tonem gwiazdy filmowej z lat czterdziestych - to wyrok śmierci czy dożywocie?