Does Categorising Mental Illnesses Help or Hinder Our Understanding of Mental Health?

Over the past couple of decades, the way we talk about mental health—especially for adolescents—has shifted dramatically. More young people are being diagnosed with mental health conditions, and these issues are being discussed more openly than ever before.¹ For Generation Z (those born between the mid-1990s and early 2010s), mental health is no longer a taboo topic. It is everywhere – on social media, in politics, in schools, and even everyday conversations. In 2021, “anxiety” was named Oxford Children’s Word of the Year.² But it wasn’t just a word, it reflected a huge cultural shift.

As mental health diagnoses rise, important questions are raised about the impact of this shift. Are these labels helping teens, or are they doing more harm than good? This blog series – Labelling Mental Illness amongst Adolescents in the 21st Century: A Double-Edged Sword – will break down the good and bad of labelling mental illnesses in today’s world. This first blog will focus on the concept of categorisation and whether it is an appropriate tool for understanding mental illnesses.

The Case for Labelling Mental Illness

Let’s start with the positives: labels are not always a bad thing. In the context of mental health, they typically refer to clinical diagnoses – such as depression, general anxiety disorder, or bipolar disorder – that are recognised in tools like the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). This guide helps mental health professionals identify and categorise mental health conditions, serving as a tool for navigating the complexities of mental illness.

Labels can really help when it comes to understanding mental health, both for individuals and professionals. For clinicians, a diagnosis provides a starting point. It helps them figure out treatment plans, the right therapy, or any necessary medication. For someone struggling with their mental health, getting a label can often bring a sense of relief and clarity. It’s an explanation for what they’re going through and can validate their experiences. It can also help reduce confusion or guilt about why they are feeling the way they do.

Labels can also help friends and family better understand what someone is going through. For example, if a teen is diagnosed with general anxiety disorder, the people around them can learn how to create a calm, supportive environment. Labels make it easier to talk about mental health, raise awareness, and can reduce stigma. On a broader scale, they help researchers figure out causes, treatments, and prevention strategies. However, it is important to acknowledge that for some, labels can enhance stigmas. For example, schizophrenia is often portrayed negatively in the media, which can reinforce harmful stereotypes and discourage people from seeking help. This contrast highlights how labels for different mental illnesses can either lessen stigmas or reinforce harmful stereotypes, making them a double-edged sword in how we understand and address mental health.

The Risks of Over-Labelling

Labelling can get tricky—and even harmful—when it is overdone or applied too rigidly. The reality is, mental health doesn’t always fit neatly into categories. Everyone experiences their struggles differently, even if they share the same diagnosis. Trying to simplify mental illness into a list of symptoms doesn’t always work because it is so complex and personal.

This is demonstrated by the high comorbidity rates amongst adolescents who often suffer from multiple, overlapping conditions. For example, ADHD frequently occurs alongside depression or anxiety disorders.³ Research shows that nearly half of people with major depressive disorder (MDD) also experience at least one anxiety disorder during their lifetime.⁴ So where does one diagnosis stop and the next one start? For many teens, mental health issues don’t fit into standardised boxes. They are messy, interconnected, and complicated, often resulting in people being given several different labels. Hybrid conditions like schizoaffective disorder, which combines symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, also show just how limiting these labels can be.

There is also the issue of research. Mental health studies often focus on specific, isolated conditions instead of how they overlap. This makes it harder to develop more holistic, integrated treatment plans, resulting in the dominance of the categorical approach. Many mental illnesses exist on a spectrum, yet traditional diagnostic systems still treat them as separate categories which can lead to misdiagnosis or overly simplistic treatment plans.⁵ More and more experts are pushing for a “dimensional approach,” which looks at mental health as a scale rather than as isolated conditions. This dimensional model, where symptoms are scored on a scale, offers a more flexible and nuanced understanding of mental health, but it has yet to be widely adopted.⁵

The Need for a Holistic Approach

Given these complexities, it is clear that the current system of labelling mental illnesses isn’t perfect. On the one hand, labels can provide clarity and structure. On the other, they can oversimplify the complexity of mental health and ignore the individual experiences of the person behind the label. That is why a more holistic approach is needed, one that uses the diagnosis as a guideline and considers the person as a whole. This means considering factors such as personal history, environment, and overall life context when understanding their mental health.

This is where Cam AI comes in. As an AI chatbot designed for early mental health intervention, it allows adolescents to reach out at any time. Unlike traditional diagnostic approaches which rely on rigid checklists and self-reported symptoms, CamAI offers a more personal and nuanced understanding of their struggles. It doesn’t try to diagnose the young person but rather offers an empathetic listening ear to validate their feelings and provide advice based on clinically informed principles.

The Bottom Line

Labels can be both helpful and harmful—it is all about how we use them. For teens, getting a diagnosis can offer comfort and clarity, but it is crucial that they are used as one tool amongst many. The future of mental health care will likely involve a more flexible and individualised approach that combines the structure of labels with a deeper understanding of a person’s unique experience.

Mental health is complicated, and no two people’s struggles look the same. As conversations around mental health continue to grow, we need to make sure that labels don’t define people—they should guide us towards better understanding, support, and treatment.

What are your thoughts on this? Have labels helped or hurt your experience with mental health? Please feel free to email hello@cam-ai.co.uk with any opinions you have on this topic, we’d love to hear from you!

References

1. NHS England. (2023, November 21). One in five children and young people had a probable mental disorder in 2023. https://www.england.nhs.uk/2023/11/one-in-five-children-and-young-people-had-a-probable-mental-disorder-in-2023/#:~:text=Among%2017%20to%2019%2Dyear,groups%20between%202022%20and%202023. 
2. Oxford Children’s Word of the Year 2021 is Anxiety. (2022, January 18). 2023 Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/news-items/archive/cwoty_21?cc=gb
3. Katzman, M. A., Bilkey, T. S., Chokka, P. R., Fallu, A., & Klassen, L. J. (2017). Adult ADHD and comorbid disorders: clinical implications of a dimensional approach. BMC Psychiatry, 17(1), 302. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-017-1463-3 
4. Kessler, R. C., Sampson, N. A., Berglund, P., Gruber, M. J., Al-Hamzawi, A., Andrade, L., Bunting, B., Demyttenaere, K., Florescu, S., de Girolamo, G., Gureje, O., He, Y., Hu, C., Huang, Y., Karam, E., Kovess-Masfety, V., Lee, S., Levinson, D., Medina Mora, M. E., … Wilcox, M. A. (2015). Anxious and non-anxious major depressive disorder in the World Health Organization World Mental Health Surveys. Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, 24(3), 210–226. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2045796015000189 
5. Adam, D. (2013). Mental health: On the spectrum. Nature, 496(7446), 416–418. https://doi.org/10.1038/496416a 

Image Source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/mental-health-related-conceptual-art-8378723/ 

Author: Emma Crane, Cam AI Volunteer