The Myth of Normal 195

trace it in their own research, you find they didn’t find it! The divergence from what you’re being told from what is in their own scientific literature— that’s the key—it was just stunning to me.” These conspicuous non-findings are documented in Whitaker’s book Anatomy of an Epidemic and have been corroborated in other literature.[6] Contrary to what I, too, used to believe, a diagnosis like ADHD or depression or bipolar illness explains nothing. No diagnosis ever does. Diagnoses are abstractions, or summaries: sometimes helpful, always incomplete. They are professional shorthand for describing constellations of symptoms a person may report, or of other people’s observations of someone’s behavior patterns, thoughts, and emotions. For the individual in question, a diagnosis may seem to account for and validate a lifetime of experiences previously too diffuse or nebulous to put one’s finger on. That can be a first and positive step toward healing. I know this from firsthand experience. The dead end comes when we assume or believe that the diagnosis equals an explanation—an especially futile view when it comes to illnesses of something as inherently abstract as the mind. As the British psychologist Lucy Johnstone said to me, “In physical illness you have, in principle, a way of checking it out. You can say, ‘Let’s look at the blood test or the enzyme levels.’ And you could, in most cases, confirm or disconfirm it. But in psychiatry, it’s simply a circular argument, isn’t it? Why does this person have mood swings? Because they have bipolar disorder. How do you know they have bipolar disorder? Because they have mood swings.” My mind goes to A. A. Milne’s Pooh and Piglet walking in the snow in an unwitting circle, shuddering as they come across yet more “Heffalump” tracks at every turn. An oft-heard objection to mental health diagnoses, particularly with regard to children, is that they “pathologize” or “stigmatize” ordinary, healthy feelings or behaviors. Aren’t kids supposed to get bored or antsy, angry or sad? My answer would be yes—and it’s not that simple. While overdiagnosis is certainly a risk, I don’t see the spike in, say, ADHD cases over the past decades as being due solely to gullible parents, hapless teachers, overzealous school shrinks, and unscrupulous drug companies. As I discussed in earlier