We talk about mental health more than ever, but the language we should use remains a vexed issue. Should we call people who seek help patients , clients or consumers ? Should we use “person-first” expressions such as person with autism or “identity-first” expressions like autistic person ? Should we apply or avoid diagnostic labels? These questions often stir up strong feelings. Some people feel that patient implies being passive and subordinate.
Others think consumer is too transactional, as if seeking help is like buying a new refrigerator. Advocates of person-first language argue people shouldn’t be defined by their conditions. Proponents of identity-first language counter that these conditions can be sources of meaning and belonging.
Avid users of diagnostic terms see them as useful descriptors. Critics worry that diagnostic labels can box people in and misrepresent their problems as pathologies. Underlying many of these disagreements are concerns about stigma and the medicalisation of suffering.
Ideally the language we use should not cast people who experience distress as defective or shameful, or frame everyday problems of living in psychiatric terms. Our new research , published in the journal PLOS Mental Health, examines how the language of distress has evolved over nearly 80 years. Here’s what we found.
Generic terms – such as mental illness , psychiatric disorder or psychological problem – have largely escaped attention in debates about the language .
