Increasingly, in our culture, we find ourselves framing our experiences through the lens of psychiatric and mental health concepts. This is particularly noticeable in young people, who, even more than adults, seem to make sense of their identities through this kind of language.
The mental health framework has its use. Concepts from psychology, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, at their best can involve nuanced insights into our thoughts and feelings. But this language goes all the way down to psychobabble, tele-psychology and diagnosis via TikTok and that’s a more complicated picture.