"What Mate did is nowhere near customary clinical procedure: a diagnosis requires a structured assessment and adequate time with a patient. And to render a diagnosis publicly raises obvious privacy concerns. However, the gesture was much in keeping with the rash of diagnostic claims and self-labeling that have swept the internet and mass-market publishing, creating a space where confessional zeal and memeified pseudoscience sometimes abetted by therapists who should know better have become almost routine."
"Today, an entire industry has spawned around the idea that everything is trauma. Once understood as the psyche's confrontation with genuine catastrophe, trauma is now treated as a personal possession: something to be owned, narrated and curated by the individual. This drift marks the entrance point to a broader cultural shift: the commodification of pain. It is evident on #TraumaTok, where across more than 650,000 posts creators variously rant, weep and recast traits as symptoms Perfectionist? It's your trauma! to great algorithmic reward."
In March 2023 Dr Gabor Mate publicly diagnosed Prince Harry with ADD, depression, anxiety and PTSD after reading the memoir Spare. The public diagnosis bypassed customary clinical procedures and raised privacy concerns. This episode reflects a wider cultural trend of rampant diagnostic claims and self-labeling across the internet and mass-market publishing. Trauma is increasingly framed as a personal possession to be owned, narrated and curated. An industry now markets trauma as ubiquitous, with #TraumaTok featuring over 650,000 posts recasting traits as symptoms and bookstores stocking thousands of anxiety, stress and trauma-related titles. The result is the commodification of pain.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]