Dear Murtaza:

Psychiatric diagnoses are supposed to be given responsibly by competent, responsible medical professionals, after spending enough time with the patient/ client, asking questions, taking notes, studying notes, taking time to consider this or that, meeting with the patient again… not haphazardly, like you described.

I didn’t know that your father had schizophrenia and paranoia, and your brother has autism, or as is currently framed: he is on the autistic spectrum. Like I wrote to you earlier, I believe that at the core of most mental diagnoses is anxiety, including these two diagnoses. I don’t believe much in genetics being the cause, but in early life emotional experience.

“‘better I don’t offer you any advice’- I’m speechless”, you wrote. Well, I am making a note to myself to not offer you any advice. I will need to remind myself of this commitment, because I expect it to be difficult for me.

“I am smiling right now because I am typing these words for you knowing that you will be reading them”- it was nothing about what you said, it was about me smiling at the thought that on the other side of the world, Murtaza will be sitting in front of the computer reading my words.

Back to mental diagnoses, you wrote: “the ‘therapist’ diagnosed me with severe depression, and that’s it”- reads correct to me, officially the diagnosis is called Major depressive disorder (MDD): “A person having major depressive episode usually exhibits a  low mood, which pervades all aspects of life, and an inability to experience pleasure in previously enjoyable activities. Depressed people may be preoccupied with- or ruminate over- thoughts and feelings of worthlessness… withdrawal from social situations and activities.. irritability, and thoughts of death or suicide. Insomnia is common among the depressed.. the person’s behavior is either agitated or lethargic”, etc., Wikipedia. It all fits, doesn’t it, and features of the diagnoses you considered for your self are all included in the MDD diagnosis.

I just came across the term depressive realism that I think applies to you very much, (it is not a mental diagnosis), psychology today: “Do negative or depressed people see the world more realistically? People with a depressed mood may demonstrate more accurate judgment about an event.. and a more realistic perception of their own abilities and limitations. The phenomenon is referred to as depressed realism. This is observed both among people in a state of depression and among longer-term ‘trait’ pessimists.

Wikipedia on depressed realism: “Although depressed individuals are thought to have a negative cognitive bias… depressive realism argues not only that this negativity may reflect a more accurate appraisal of the world but also that non-depressed individuals’ appraisals are positively biased”-

– I know that you hate those positively biased appraisals, untrue things people say because it feels good to say them, for them. Here is my “diagnosis” for you: Depressive Realist Truth Seeker (DRTS).

anita