Why is more diagnosis better diagnosis? I hear this constantly, literally every time people point out we might be calling people mentally ill now that we wouldn't have called mentally ill 20 years ago people go "wow we must be diagnosing people better". To me better diagnosis would be reflected in things like the suicide rate dropping, drug abuse falling, general health metrics improving, and so on, not in simply increasing the amount of people we give labels and medicalise.

I am so incredibly unconvinced that labelling a bunch of people as mentally ill is "better" because the more we're diagnosed people as mentally ill, the more things like suicide have increased. Now obviously that can be due to an underlying increase in mental illness driving suicide, the thing is the diagnosis itself and the resulting differential treatment of society and your self-perception of yourself can be the cause of that mental illness. Making the diagnosis a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So far the increase in diagnosis over time has completely failed to actually improve peoples mental health. I am constantly perplexed at why nobody is worried about this. It seems how we diagnose people is totally unconnected from any empirical data on if a culture more willing to diagnose people is making people healthier on a population-wide level. To me it seems like most evidence points to the population-wide trend getting worse and the increase in diagnosis being a failure making people sicker, and I can't help but also notice many of those who advocate that the increase in diagnosis is a great thing have a conflict of interest and financially benefit from more people being labelled ill.