Your post reminded me of my own experience when I could locate the DSM-IV. I tried very hard to publicize it and get people to pay attention to it, but it was mainly out of simple curiosity. The idea was to popularize anything that had to do with presenting morphological, neurological, and psychological characteristics that showed signs of pathologies and to find out if people felt they fit some of those labels.
The result was that many identified with the DSM-IV. I remember telling them: “You need medication for life, you have not reached old age yet”... The truth is that it has been, I think, about 13 years. Today, many people I met have a life quite different from what they expected when they “identified” with what they read in the DSM-IV. They don't suffer from ADHD or depression...except for a few cases, but I learned that it was already hereditary or hormonal. So I was a big agitator for all the content currently being consumed related to DSM, neurodivergence, etc. These assertions do not deny that they exist, they do. And their early detections are important for the issue of “fitting in” and getting early help to avoid irreversible damage as you rightly state: “Autism is certainly a spectrum, but it doesn't become too much of an issue until it reaches a point where they couldn't survive without the care of those around them”.
In my case, I tend to get bored easily. If I took one of those tests, they would say that I have ADHD, but I don't. I don't. It's really because of other issues related to the environment I grew up in and, well, a long story. My point is, that if there's a very strong disclosure of underlying concepts that you can find in the DSM-IV (there's also the DSM-V) without explanations or contextualized understanding, people are very likely to identify. It's like, for example, the fact that I feel a fever leads me to think, “Oh, it's just viral, the flu”.... But it turns out that it's not, that a few days later I feel worse and I go to the doctor, and then the results determine that my feverish symptom was the result of a urinary tract infection. In a manner of speaking.
So, the same thing happens with many of these concepts, they become popular, and, well, everyone interprets them in their way and that is where the problems begin. It is as if it were a “methodological subjectivism”: “I read a book that finec recommended to me, I interpreted it and adapted it to my own experiences, but I never chose to be more objective and look for an expert or consult so that I could have a more complete conceptualization”.
By the way, I remember there was a quite popular test, I think two years ago, the famous (MBTI). When I completed it I did it several times, the result was that I had multiple personalities, and that made people confused, but the truth is that this test (like many in the area of psychology) has received criticism.
Well, it is a topic for a while, about labels and their possible consequences for not fitting in. I leave you this historical data on infanticide in the Roman Empire (you can consult here and here) and also on senicide. The issue of categorizations about what is different, strange, or divergent from the “normal” is very old, only that the concepts, methodologies, and everything else have changed a lot.
So to speak, today it is more common to speak of ADHD or depression than of sins and demons, although this depends on the social context that is more predominant: the conceptualizations of the DSM-IV, the neurodivergences or the interpretations of sin or the existence of demons. The consultation of the priest or the father no longer has the same effect as before, being replaced by the figures of the therapist, psychiatrist or coaching.
Well, I think that is enough text in this commentary. 😅
That's a really good example/analogy. I was actually listening to an interview with a Dr today talking about peri-menopause and menopause and how often women in peri-menopause are misdiagnosed with depression or other mental health disorders when it's actually the change in hormones that's affecting their brain chemistry and indeed lots of other functions in their bodies. So many things, both physical and mental, will change as our bodies change through puberty as well.
I feel like this is a trait that is becoming more common now with the immediate entertainment at our fingertips that is social media. A demonstration of how environmental factors can change our brain chemistry.
I recall the popularity of the MBTI test, although I think it has waned somewhat now. My daughter got me to take it when she was a teenager because I think a lot of people were putting their "personality type" in their social media profiles. I don't recall my result, likely because it had no meaning for me.
I rather feel like the brain is a bit too complex and changeable for us to easily label conditions. We still don't even fully understand the complexities of the physical body, after all.
I have come across references to infanticide in many ancient cultures, but not senicide before. I guess it makes sense for the same reasons as infanticide would have. It makes me grateful to not be living in a situation that would call for it and I suspect people would be less eager to want to claim disability, mental or otherwise, if we still did live in those situations.
Thank you for such a thought provoking comment.