As I’ve been trying to wrap up this season of the podcast, I’ve been reflecting, in particular on my conversations about psychiatric diagnosis with Dr. Awais Aftab and Dr. Miri Forbes.

I keep coming back to this question: How do we decide what human traits, behaviors, and subjective experiences to pathologize? What makes something about a person a problem that we try to fix?

It’s a deeply complicated question, with few, if any, absolute answers. Yet I still think we have to wander that hall of mirrors, and I believe that how we conceptualize and approach the question is actually more important than any conclusions we might make.

Because when we are able to articulate the various factors that influence what we pathologize and when, we actually increase our ability to apply those factors across contexts without needing to have an ultimate conclusion that is true for all people, in all contexts, at all times.