The Power of a Diagnoses

The Power of a Diagnosis

The Identity Dance was an excellent read. I fully believe that environment has a play in the outcome of one’s life. Let me give you an example. In my family there is a set of identical twins. I will refer to each individual twin as Twin 1 and Twin 2, they are labeled according to birth order with Twin 1 being the oldest and Twin 2 be the younger of the two. The difference in their age is 4 minutes. Growing up, these twins seemed to be identical in every way. From kindergarten on up through school, these twins were inseparable and very competitive with one another. During these competitions there was no distinction in one twin being better than the other, they performed equally as well in everything from childhood races to doing school work. As young adults they continued to compete in the game of life and still there seemed to be no distinction between the two in terms of their accomplishments. Then at the age of 25 a fork in the road, that we will call “The power of a diagnosis” began to separate the twins. Twin 1 got into some legal trouble and quickly told a psychologist all about it. As a result Twin 1 was given a Bi-Polar diagnoses which came with what one would consider “Perks” at the time. The legal trouble disappeared, and this new found label which deemed her mentally disabled, came with a social security check and free health care for the rest of her life.
As the years progressed Twin 1 seemed to grow into her diagnoses with many diagnoses to follow. Twin 2, on the other hand, raised a child, had a successful career, had purchased a couple homes and lived an average middle class life. Unfortunately, Twin 1 was unable to separate herself from the many diagnoses she was given over the years. Twin 2 often thought to herself, and even had conversations with her sister, about how it was possible to be so identical and yet so different.
Today Twin 1 lives in the lower level of Twin 2’s house. Having had no responsibility in terms of participating in supporting herself or taking much accountability for her life, another title can be given to Twin 1, learned helplessness. Twin 1 today struggles with having a place in life. Twin 2 often reminds her that at any point she can begin to participate. Twin 2 reminds her of how identical they were up until age 25.
After reading the article it seems reasonable that although the two share the same DNA, environmental influence definitely played a role in this situation. The question Twin 2 has is: “Could diagnoses be part of that environmental condition which created such different lives for these two sisters?”
Twin 2 was reminded of a reading she had in her first psychology class just last semester, it was titled “WHOSE CRAZY HERE ANYWAY?” by Rosenhan, D.L. (1973).on being sane in insane places. In this particular study Rosenhan recruits 8 participants including himself to serve as pseudo patients. Three women and five men are among the participants. Three are psychologist, one a psychiatrist, one a painter, one a homemaker, one a pediatrician, and one a graduate student. These participants were all instructed to follow identical instructions, they were to call the hospital, make an appointment and complain that they were hearing voices. Other than this single symptom all the participants acted completely normal and gave truthful information in their interviews. Upon completion of the interview all of the pseudo patients were admitted into the hospitals and all but one was admitted with the diagnoses of Schizophrenia. Once the patients were admitted into the hospital they acted completely normal. To make a long story short, these pseudo patients stayed in these hospitals anywhere from 7 to 52 days. And when they left the hospital they had recorded diagnoses of Schizophrenia in remission in their files.
“How big of an impact can mental illness diagnoses have on a person’s life?”

Stacy Hennessy