If everything is traumatic, is anything traumatic? The power of labels

All In The Mind

ABC

Life Sciences, Health & Fitness, Science

4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 22 November 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We've come a long way in how we talk about mental health.

But while diagnoses like depression and anxiety can empower people to seek help and support — they also influence how we see ourselves and how others might see us, too.

Today, we investigate 'concept creep.' It's the idea that the labels we use to describe mental health are expanding and being applied to an ever-wider array of human behaviours.

We look at what's causing this, the impacts it might have (both positive and negative), and what it means for how we understand mental health conditions.

This episode first aired in November 2024.

Guest:

Professor Nick HaslamProfessor of Psychology, University of Melbourne

Credits:

Presenter/producer: Sana Qadar
Producer: Rose Kerr
Senior producer: James Bullen
Sound engineer: Simon Branthwaite

You can catch up on more episodes of the All in the Mind podcast with journalist and presenter Sana Qadar, exploring the psychology of topics like stress, memory, communication and relationships on the ABC Listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts.

More information:

Concept creep: Psychology's expanding concepts of harm and pathology

Transcript

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0:00.0	ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more.
0:07.7	It is a truth universally acknowledged that on one's 250th birthday, there should be a celebration.
0:15.1	I'm Claire Nichols, and on the book show, we're raising our teacups to Jane Austen.
0:19.2	Why, Austin? What is it about it?
0:21.3	Authors, Column Tobin, Karen Joy Fowler, and more will explore why in 2025 the Austin
0:27.6	effect is bigger than ever. That's quite incredible. Search for the book show and look for dear Jane
0:33.1	wherever you get your podcasts or hear it now on the ABC Listen app.
0:38.2	There was a time that admitting you were seeing a shrink or talking openly about something
0:43.1	like suicide was utterly taboo, shameful even. And women's mental health? Well, women are just
0:51.0	hysterical. PTSD after war? That didn't exist.
0:55.1	That was shell shock.
0:56.1	It was a weakness.
0:58.1	And while stigma, shame, and misconceptions about certain conditions definitely still exist,
1:03.6	we have undoubtedly come a long way.
1:06.1	Not to toot our own horn, but it's why we do this show and why so many pods on mental health and psychology
1:11.9	have become so popular in recent years. But, and there's always a but, it seems all this
1:18.6	talking and normalizing could be having another effect.
1:22.6	Probably part of the story is that we're talking more about this. That has some benefits in
1:27.9	terms of improving mental health literacy, but it probably also tends to lead us to see
1:32.2	everything through a psychiatric lens. And that can affect how we see others and ourselves,
1:38.3	because mental health labels have power. And research shows if we apply them more casually,
1:43.7	that power can run both ways.
	...

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