Terminology and definitions are great, often. Specificity can be very useful, mostly, sometimes.

It's depression mode. I'm John Moe. I'm glad you're here.

Strict classification can save a lot of time when it comes to mental health.

You say anorexia, and people know what that means.

You say major depressive disorder.

People get it.

Sometimes you can even skip past the words and just use acronyms.

We say that someone has PTSD or OCD and people will know what

you mean. They'll understand the person you're talking about better. There's a catch though.

Terms and definitions aren't so useful in portraying the full complexity and nuance of a person's brain.

You can say someone has an anxiety disorder, but that doesn't cover what that person's

life experiences have been. It doesn't shed much light on what they inherited genetically.

It doesn't say much about their biology. And that's when we need to tell stories. That's when we need to hear about

someone's life, as much of it as we can. And in those stories, we can understand more about

the human being and whatever is going on in their minds. We can get where those terms and definitions

fit neatly and where they might not fit so well.

It's a heavier lift to tell stories. It's a lot more work, and it's even a lot more work

to hear stories about someone's full human mental complexity. But that's what's great about books.

Rachel Aviv is a staff writer for The New Yorker, and she has a new

book, Strangers to Ourselves, Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us. The book is a series of

profiles of people with evident mental health issues, including Rachel herself. But in telling the

full stories of these people, beyond the terms that a doctor might use,

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