Why Michael Jordan Is Wrong About Labels

According to a Hanes’ commercial, Michael Jordan hates labels. He rips them off strangers in movie theaters and airplanes. And Michael has a point — clothing labels can be irritating and painful — they can stop you from shrinking a favorite sweater or ruining your best pair of jeans.

Similarly, labeling people can also be irritating and painful. However, proper labels or diagnosis can prevent you from putting your child on the wrong medications or sending them to the wrong therapies.

I know many parents who fear the stigma of labeling their children’s mental illness. Afraid, I suppose, of admitting there’s something wrong with their child. Or that perhaps a mental illness label will somehow make them look like bad parents. In my children’s father’s case, he fears labeling our son will make him lazy and that he won’t try to “snap out of” his condition.

Today, after 11 years of labeling and mislabeling my son, he received a new label, a diagnosis actually, of schizoid personality disorder. Right now, there’s no known medicine or therapy to treat this disorder. Like a patient with a chronic illness, it can be managed but not cured.

But this label fit him well. I knew it the second I found it on Google last week. People with schizoid personality disorder present themselves as indifferent, unattached and unmotivated to succeed. They are not in touch with their emotional state and have a hard time connecting with or empathizing with other people. My conversations with my son are almost always more of a monologue than a dialogue.

Imagine how someone with these challenges would fare in psychotherapy. Not well, not well at all. Countless well-meaning therapists, counselors, teachers and medical doctors have thrown up their hands and said, “I can’t get through to him.” Or, as one particularly humorous physician said, “Your son is above my pay grade.”

Yesterday, when I asked his psychiatrist if perhaps he had schizoid personality disorder, she looked a bit sheepish and said, “I hate to label young people, but yes, this is what he has.”

Her fear of stigma around a label unfortunately has done my son more harm than good.

For the year we have been seeing her, he has been to three therapists, including a three-week stint at an intensive outpatient program 100-miles away from home, that cost thousands of dollars, cost him mental anguish and eventually cost me my job.

A doctor wouldn’t prescribe a medicine that wouldn’t work and in fact, could be harmful. A doctor wouldn’t avoid giving you a diagnosis because of the stigma attached to it. So why do we avoid proper diagnosing and labeling of mental health conditions?

Now that I know about my son, I can accept who he is and stop trying to fix him. I can find a therapist who will mentor him toward goals and not try to get him to “open up.”

Yes, my son has a label I would prefer he didn’t, but Mr. Jordan, if you see him in a movie theater, kindly keep your hands off of him.

A version of this piece originally appeared on @Wit’s End.