Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to stimulate nurses and other mental health professionals to reflect on what they understand by a psychiatric diagnosis and how they use this understanding.
Background
I have twenty years’ experience as mental health service user and in this time, I have received numerous diagnoses which have had a variety of impacts on me.
Methods
The paper began as notes drawn from introspection. I ordered my memories and reflections chronologically to reconstruct this narrative.
Key points
My case makes the point that psychiatric diagnosis is not an established, universal science like in somatic medicine, but a still evolving complex of contradictions and opinions and should not be treated as authoritative. I aim to challenge what I see as a general overestimation of how much a diagnosis tells you about a person and how you should treat them.
Relevance Statement
This article aims to unsettle what the author sees as a general over‐confidence in diagnosis and an over‐estimation of what a diagnosis tells you about a person.