We’re seeing words like depression and PTSD everywhere—on social media, in the news, and even in casual conversations. People are talking more openly about mental health, which is helping to reduce the stigma and shame around it. But using these labels all the time has some downsides too. Some people think we might be treating normal feelings like sadness or stress as big, serious problems, which could lead to overusing medications. Once people are labeled, it might change how others see them and even how they see themselves.
Recently, my team did a study to look at how labeling milder mental health issues affects how people see these problems. We found that labels like “depression” make people feel more empathy toward someone who’s struggling, but they also make people think it’s harder for that person to get better. Basically, using these labels can help in some ways, but it also has drawbacks—especially when applied to less severe issues.
A big worry is that we’re broadening what counts as a mental illness, labeling things that aren’t actually that serious. Psychologist Lucy Foulkes has pointed out that this might be leading people to think they have a mental illness when they don’t really meet the criteria. Our research backs this up, showing that people with a broader idea of mental illness tend to self-diagnose more than those with a narrower view.
To dig deeper, we did two experiments with around 1,000 American adults. Each person read a story about someone with mild mental health symptoms, which were either given a diagnostic label (like “major depressive disorder”) or no label at all. We then asked how much empathy they felt, if they thought treatment was a good idea, and if they believed the person should have extra support at work or school. They also rated how likely they thought the person was to fully recover and how much control they thought the person had over their struggles.
People who read the labeled descriptions were more empathetic and supported treatment and accommodations more than those who read unlabeled versions. But they also saw the issues as longer-lasting and tougher to recover from. This pattern was especially noticeable with less familiar issues like binge-eating or bipolar disorder.
In short, using diagnostic labels for mild mental health cases has both ups and downs. On one hand, labels can encourage empathy, support, and help-seeking. On the other, they might make mental health issues seem like permanent traits rather than temporary challenges, which could discourage recovery. Even well-meaning labels can have unintended effects, leading to unnecessary treatment or making people feel defined by their diagnosis in ways that aren’t always helpful.