I don't know that you have any way of measuring mistakes vs successes in any objective way. Sometimes mistakes are helpful even (as they were with me--- a misdiagnosis for depression helped me out and lead to a very real ADD diagnosis, but I refuse to give up on my anti-authoritarian tendencies--- and indeed I do not take prescription medication for ADD and haven't regularly since I was 17).
The problem I see is that there are a lot of people who genuinely think that they are treating sick patients who will get better and have fewer problems in life if they just get in line and stop resisting authority. I see it in schools and among mental health professionals. But those people have a very narrow and misguided IMNSHO opinion of success in life.
As (early psychotherapist) Roberto Assagioli put it, clinically normal means mediocre, and to excel, you have to step outside of that. He claimed that there were criteria you could use to tell whether a disturbance was pathological or morbid, or whether it was a first step towards growth and breaking free.
This brings me to ODD. The concern is that some people who are habitually defiant get worse and can become sociopathic later. But if that's the concern, it's grotesquely overdiagnosed.
I couldn't agree more. It seems that there are some who think mental illness is a crock of shit and psychiatry is witchcraft (admittedly hyperbolic but not enormously so) while there are others who believe every facet of human behaviour is diagnosable and "correctable". The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between.
The problem I see is that there are a lot of people who genuinely think that they are treating sick patients who will get better and have fewer problems in life if they just get in line and stop resisting authority. I see it in schools and among mental health professionals. But those people have a very narrow and misguided IMNSHO opinion of success in life.
As (early psychotherapist) Roberto Assagioli put it, clinically normal means mediocre, and to excel, you have to step outside of that. He claimed that there were criteria you could use to tell whether a disturbance was pathological or morbid, or whether it was a first step towards growth and breaking free.
This brings me to ODD. The concern is that some people who are habitually defiant get worse and can become sociopathic later. But if that's the concern, it's grotesquely overdiagnosed.