When Recognition Becomes a Label
John Locke Institute Global Essay Prize · Psychology
My answer: mental illnesses today are simultaneously overdiagnosed and better recognized — and both outcomes are driven by the same social change. People are now more willing to take psychological suffering seriously, which brings hidden conditions to light, but also creates the belief that suffering becomes legitimate only once it has a medical name.
- Competition
- John Locke Institute Global Essay Prize
- Category
- Psychology
- Question
- “Are mental illnesses overdiagnosed?”
Where the essay begins
The essay opens from my own experience of a difficult year at fourteen — real suffering that was never diagnosed — and the question of whether being seen as a patient would have helped or changed how I understood myself.
How it is built
- 01
Why overdiagnosis occurs
Attribution and the looping effect; the relative-age effect in ADHD diagnosis; how social media and subcultures turn psychiatric language into identity.
- 02
Recognizing unseen suffering
Why better recognition has reduced stigma and reached people whose pain was previously dismissed.
- 03
Where to draw the boundary
What role diagnosis, resilience and community support should each play — and why access to care should not depend on becoming a patient.
Conclusion
Volunteering with adolescents, I met both sides: young people using mild diagnoses to explain away every difficulty, and others with severe symptoms whose parents insisted they were lazy. The question is therefore not whether to expand or reduce diagnosis, but to clarify its purpose — broad enough to support those in need, precise enough not to undermine personal agency.
In others’ words
“A diagnosis should help explain a person’s suffering without becoming the final explanation of who that person is.”
Paper
When Recognition Becomes a Label
Fan, Z. John Locke Institute Global Essay Prize, Psychology.
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