The Effects of Psychiatric Diagnosis: 

Health insurance benefits can only be used for treatment of illness.  This means that your therapist must make a psychiatric diagnosis about you before benefits will be available.

We are increasingly seeing diagnoses come back to haunt people.  Many people have found that using health insurance benefits for therapy has actually cost them money because, after making a claim, their premiums went up.  This is despite overwhelming scientific evidence that therapy improves general health and reduces total medical bills.  Life and disability insurance applications have been affected.  Military applications and security clearances have been held up.  Employers are sometimes notified about all medical care visits, including therapy, by the insurance company. 

The very existence of psychiatric diagnoses creates a false impression that most people sail through life without serious problems and only the ill need help.  That is just not true.  All of us, in our fast-paced, hugely stressful society, have hard times.  None of us today can be expected automatically to have all the coping skills we need.  Therapy helps people develop skills they have not yet had a chance to develop.

The system of psychiatric diagnosis is only one way of looking at human problems.  Its biggest advantage is that it helps get health insurance benefits, an advantage that is waning.  Psychiatric diagnoses do not usually present issues in ways that help people actually solve problems.  In fact, diagnoses often get in the way.  Other ways of looking at human problems are more helpful.

Choosing not to use health insurance benefits means you do not have a psychiatric diagnosis.  That means that as people make decisions about you in the future, such a diagnosis will not be an issue.