It's today explained, I'm Noel King. Today's show is about diagnosis.

You get sick, go to the doctor, the doctor tells you what's wrong. You have been diagnosed

and then you get medicine and then you get better. Or a different story. You're sick,

you go to the doctor, the doctor tells you what's wrong. And then without even realizing

what you're doing, you adjust your behavior somewhat to fit your diagnosis. So, your

diagnosed with anxiety and now you're an anxious person, depression and now you're a depressed

person. Rachel Levive, a writer for the New Yorker, found herself wondering whether a diagnosis

of mental illness could lead a person to behave differently, more in line with the diagnosis

perhaps than with themselves. If you have ever been diagnosed with anything, you won't want to

miss what's coming up. This episode is brought to you by Slack. With Slack, you can bring all

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dhq.

It's today explained in her new book Strangers to Ourselves, Rachel Levive looks deeply into

the life of a man who changed the way that we and the field of psychiatry think about mental illness

and about how we treat it. Ray was a very successful doctor in the DC area in the late 70s and he

became depressed and stopped to be able to work at the level that he had been working in.

He was stuck in this whole of rumination where he felt like he'd made a series of bad decisions

related to his two children. He had left them go to Europe with his ex-wife and related to his

business. He had sold a portion of his business and he was stuck in a thought loop where he kept

...