As time goes on, our understanding of psychology and the workings of the human brain expand further and further. In fact, the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals in the United States, lists more than 300 disorders which humans can have.
While the proliferation of information on the subject of mental disorders has helped us identify and assist those suffering from them, the diagnosis also comes at a dangerous and expensive cost: the stigma of having a mental disorder.
Once someone is diagnosed with a mental disorder, people tend to view that individual differently. Someone with bipolar disorder who was previously thought of as demanding could be seen as crazy, and so on. But the worst part is that once someone is labeled as mentally unsound or suffering from a mental disorder, all credibility they had seems to immediately evaporate.
Take Howard Hughes, for example, the formerly renowned businessman, aviator and producer — once one of the wealthiest men in the world, today he is thought of as nothing more than an unreliable recluse marred with the label of the obsessive-compulsive disorder which drove him insane.
Are we to assume Hughes was any less obsessive-compulsive in his earlier years when he was changing the world? And what if society had diagnosed Mr. Hughes with the reclusive, OCD label earlier in his life? Would he have even had the opportunity to go attempt his goals? Would anyone have followed him on his far-fetched, crazy but ultimately successful endeavors?
Would you follow someone who has been diagnosed with mental illness?
Maybe you would, but I believe it is far easier to disregard someone for being "mentally unstable" than to actually take anything they say seriously.
According to current research "one in four adults — approximately 61.5 million Americans — experiences mental illness in a given year."
And if this number doesn’t scare you, then it should. More than likely we, as a society, have already stripped away any respect those 61.5 million Americans could ever have gotten from their peers. All because of a label.
Imagine if (as is widely thought today) the narcissistic, overly compulsive and borderline sociopathic Steve Jobs had been diagnosed with a mental disorder. Would Steve Wozniak have ever befriended him? Would anyone have ever invested in Apple when it was a startup led by a mentally ill college dropout? Would Apple have ever taken him back as CEO? Would the personal computer and graphical user interface even exist?
We should be careful not to judge a book by its cover. We should be cautious that in the process of diagnosing we do not simultaneously restrict the future endeavors of those we are trying to help. We should help those who need help but at the same time understand that the qualities which make a person “crazy," which lead to the diagnosis of a mental disorder, are often the same qualities which lead to greatness.
Because, as Apple can attest, "Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."