#...so it's always *very* strange to me when people operate with the prescriptivist notion of diagnosis...

[uncanny-tranny]

Something interesting I've noticed about people is whether they view a diagnosis as prescriptivist or descriptivist.

Somebody who views a disability or illness as a matter of prescriptivism will often only believe somebody has a condition if they can prove it by way of a diagnosis. They will view a diagnosis almost as though it is given to you by a doctor or psychiatrist, that they are the people who can truly prove you are right or wrong, that they know best.

Somebody who views a disability or illness as descriptivist will see a diagnosis as, essentially, an official observation into behaviours or states of being that the person in question is experiencing. The descriptivist route entails the idea that somebody who will eventually be given a diagnosis is already experiencing something wrong, and that medical professionals ought to be working to observe all the symptoms the patient is experiencing and line them up with other observations (diagnoses) we have already observed in others.

I think it's important to recognize these two general attitudes about diagnosis. If you want to ally yourself with disabled people, it helps to learn how to view diagnosis as more in line with the descriptivist mindset, I think.