#052: The Madness of Mental Health Diagnosis

The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz

Episode 52 of the Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz features the author and TEDx speaker describing why the standard practice of mental health diagnosis is a kind of madness in itself.

Listen to learn why…

• The American Psychiatric Association has codified some behaviors as mental health disorders
• This attempt to objectively pathologize expected and understandable responses to life situations is inherently flawed
• Refusing to abandon 17th century mechanistic thinking has led to an epidemic of suffering
• Labeling normal human behavior (assigning a diagnosis) contributes to this epidemic
• A diagnosis is a subjective description of behavior, nothing more, and certainly not a real thing

Mel also offers an alternative to diagnosis-based therapeutic approaches: one based on embracing uncertainty and possibility as described in his book The Possibility Principle, the companion to this podcast.

Get more of Mel’s Uncommon sense through regular short videos on his Instagram channel!

Dive deeper into the connection between embracing uncertainty and being significant in The Possibility Principle, and in Mel’s TEDx talk.

Are you ready to write the script of your own life and be significant? Tell Mel about it in the comments!

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The post #052: The Madness of Mental Health Diagnosis first appeared on Mel Schwartz, LCSW.