Diagnosis can be helpful in certain circumstances, for example health care insurance reimbursement (Enns, 2004). However, current diagnostic labels lack the important evaluation of the whole picture. The practice of categorizing and labelling people experiencing psychological difficulty takes away from the reality that each person is an individual with unique life experience, by categorizing people and judging them against a perceived measure of societal normalcy. Ballou and West explain, “feminist critiques have long and loudly asserted that diagnosis is largely naming and norming and is tied inextricably to the life experiences, values, achievements, and social expectations of the dominant group membership” (Ballou & West, 2000). People
