Not so long ago, the approach to diagnosing a mental condition was hardly based on scientific empirical evidence. Without objectively identifying disorders in an individual's mental state, they were assessed and determined by social and cultural contexts. Since then, the nature of mental health diagnosis has changed, based entirely on the realistic understanding of the biological nature of the disease.
The more straightforward and easy-to-think-of nature of diagnosis is to identify the causes of a condition so that a medical professional can identify its causes and treat the diseases. However, the function of diagnoses does not stop at treating and curing patients. It also allows the members of the medical community (e.g. professionals, students, researchers, and industries) to use a particularly defined diagnostic term: assuring that the medics and stakeholders when talking about a condition, are on the same page.
However, diagnosis (in particular, categorical diagnosis), perceived as the allocation of a particular name to an experience of illness, has crucial social and cultural characteristics, making diagnosis deeply embedded in our contemporary notion of care. When a diagnosis is given, it reframes symptoms into a pattern that appears recognizable to both doctor and patient. For the doctor, this enables the patient's history to be organized into a narrative. For the patient, diagnosis reframes the turbulence of being sick, into a condition identifiable with a profile and definition (in most cases).
Diagnosis is often a transformative moment for the person diagnosed, shaping the way in which care staff interprets speech, conduct and distress. That's all.
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