A button of mine that has been pushed yet again

[passerine]

A DSM diagnosis is not a personality trait.

No, seriously. It's not.

Please stop with the Facebook quizzes and the OKCupid memes and everything else that has "ADD" and "OCD" and "bipolar" listed in with random innocuous personality traits like, say, "friendly".

There is enough difficulty now with getting people to understand the continuum between, "Sure I understand depression - I cried when we had to put my cat to sleep when I was twelve!" and, "OMG you mean they let Crazy People out of the hospital?! Won't they, like, hurt us and stuff?"

Misplacing your keys doesn't mean you have ADD.

Alphabetizing your DVDs doesn't mean you have OCD.

Having good days and bad days DOES NOT make you bipolar, unless the good days involve things like you spending two months of rent money spontaneously in two hours, or thinking you have superhuman abilities, or things like that...and the bad days involve intrusive thoughts of all the creative ways you could end your miserable existence.

Seriously. This is incredibly offensive to the people who actually HAVE these sorts of problems, and the people who care about them.

Please. Stop.

Comments

[tralfamadore]

I wish people were more aware of how their decision to carelessly employ the usage of true diagnoses in order to describe their little quirks or momentary hiccups in typical behavior completely undermines those who truly are living with the disorders. Recently I engaged myself in a useless argument with a girl who had listed a hobby of hers (of all things!) as "being OCD." It was clear that she neither understood nor cared about the terminology she was bastardizing, and it frustrated me to no end. Of course, any attempt to reason with her proved futile as she was so set in her ways. Eventually she did apologize, but she never truly understood.

And of course, I think that's what it all boils down to. The lack of understanding for what it means to truly be living with one of these disorders. As you stated above, there's such a continuum of thought that first needs to be overcome, and I'm just not sure how that's going to happen. It's part of the reason that I have chosen to be more free and open in speaking about my own psychiatric diagnoses. Of course, I do so in a restricted environment to people I've already come to trust. But baby steps are still a league above no progress, right?

[youarefree]

I totally agree with this. Are there seriously quizzes like that? It's a good thing I haven't seen them.

[passerine]

I took one on Facebook this morning. I don't remember which one - I was sufficiently annoyed to just stop taking it and not post the results.

[zarhooie]

I read this whole thing.

[dmsj]

Hmm. See, I would list GAD/anxiety along with "introvert," or "creative," or any other number of descriptive words I might use for myself. Mind you, I /am/ someone who actually has the disorder in question, so perhaps it's a different story. But for me, GAD is a part of who I am. It's one of the pieces of what makes me who I am. So are my personality traits.

*shrug*