Title: Mental health 'labels' can do more harm than good, warn researchers
Headings: Mental health 'labels' can do more harm than good, warn researchers
Mental health 'labels' can do more harm than good, warn researchers
Wrongly judging a book by its cover
Assessing the impact of a label
Improving provision
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Diagnosis of psychiatric disorders not as important as outcomes

Content: The findings in these two research studies show that medical labels can be an obstacle not only to the treatment process and outcome, but can also be problematic to how the individual being labelled perceives him or herself as a person. The label is "sticky" and stigmatising, hard to remove and is unlikely to be helpful to the individual's understanding of his mental health problem. "Mental health professionals could explore the bio-psycho-social factors in the assessments of patients in order to better understand what the problem is and how these symptoms of the problem developed, are maintained or get worse. This would help improve the treatment efficiency, lessen the stigmatising nature of medical labels, and avoid the unwanted influence such labels can have on clinicians' judgements." Explore further
Diagnosis of psychiatric disorders not as important as outcomes
More information: "' Judging a book by its cover': An experimental study of the negative impact of a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder on clinicians' judgements of uncomplicated panic disorder." British Journal of Clinical Psychology. doi: 10.1111/bjc.12093
Provided by University of Bath
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