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On the Prevalence of Diagnosing

By Dr. Matthew Paldy

It's apparent that in today's society people readily and casually throw around diagnoses, for example, ADD, bipolar disorder, and depression. A psychotherapist I respect describes this phenomenon: "While I believe people can derive some comfort from such labels and think, "I can put a name on this. I can call this depression, I can call this PTSD, and there is some value in having those labels, there's also a risk, and the risk is thinking that these labels explain something. If you tell me a person has schizophrenia you've told me five percent of what I want to know about that person."