Week 3 - Mental Health Industrial Complex and Clash of Self - Ryan Tong

The idea of how society constructs terms and labels for the way people think is an interesting topic to judge. It is actually difficult to pinpoint which labels are okay to use and what is considered incorrect. In addition, just because something is accepted by society, does that mean that it is okay to be used? Labels are used to describe certain conditions such as how the brain interacts with itself and its mental experiences, but sometimes these categories cannot accurately describe people’s conditions. These labels only give us an idea of how to treat a patient with certain symptoms, but it does not guarantee that the problem is equivalent to the problem that that individual is experiencing. Why are such labels even used then? And if they are used to describe conditions experienced by people, where is the line that this should be drawn at? The line between being too descriptive and inaccurately describing the symptoms of the patient or providing too little information.

Because the symptoms that a patient feels may not always be of the same to that of the norm. Just because many people who receive that same condition are treated in the same way, does not mean that every person should be treated in that same way.

This applies to Shana Bulhan Haydock in her paper “fucked up”, where she describes her pain with people treating her own being as normal and that she needs to be treated to normal. She mentions that, “Why is it that when we admit the divergence someone may experience in their health, it is consolidated into pitying and fatalistic ideas of illness that needs...to be fixed.”

This quote and article resonated with me the most because Haydock has a point. If something is different and abnormal, society tells them that they are in need to be fixed into the way that “normal” or the vast majority of society should perform. Anyone who is not of that norm is considered an outcast and therefore in dire need of restoration to the norm.

But on the other hand, it would be hard for people to operate without the categorization of specific symptoms, which is why our rational world operates in the way it does and has not changed. So although I understand Haydock’s point in her article, the way that our current society operates makes sense.

Works Cited:

Haydock, S. B. (n.d.). Fucked Up: I Would Always Rather Be Abnormal Than Holistic: Nine Micro-Essays. DSM: Asian American Edition, 45-53. Retrieved April 16, 2017.