Welcome to Diversity Clinic!
This site was originally set up as part of opening a private mental clinic of the same name.
Due to the effects of COVID-19, however, we had to postpone our project unfortunately.
Thereafter, we decided to change the purpose of this site to provide practical information on mental health.
Our mission is to contribute to one mental health in diversity that is universally and easily understood.
We do hope that you will enjoy our articles and hopefully see you soon at our real clinic coming soon!
Symptoms first, not diseases
The biggest obstacle in psychiatry, or mental health medicine is that many of them have no known medical cause.
In addition, there are few diseases that can be established by a 1 to 1 cause-and-effect relationship.
Most of us nowadays agree that there is a complex process involving multiple factors.
Correspondingly, when I asked patients who actually came to see me about the process leading up to their visit to the hospital, many of them said that they understood at least to the point of “something was going wrong inside me,” but “I didn’t know how to interpret what that really was.” or “I didn’t know how to deal with it.”
We receive a lot of feedback that people are struggling with the elusive nature of “the unknown abnormalities”in mental issues.
High hurdles to seeing a psychiatrist
As an extension of this, issues such as “I didn’t know which hospital department to go to” or “I didn’t even know if I should go see a doctor in the first place” have been their major feedback.
In order to help solving that feedback, we suggest to start with the “symptoms” rather than the name of the disease in this website.
How can we define “symptoms”?
What is the difference between healthy and unhealthy mental condition?
what can be called a symptom? These are just some of the questions I frequently hear from the patients that I got privilege to be able to see.
By trying to make the elusive psychological symptoms easier to understand, and by attempting to provide understandable explanations, we believe that once we can make sense of what is happening, we can find some relief.
Voices of the People on the Shoulders of Giants
This website contains more than just explanations of the results of great research and evidence-based practice guidelines of the past. It is based on the personal experiences of real patients and their “words” that I have encountered with privilege as a psychiatrist.
It contains principles that have been put into practice together with the patients, not principles that can only be applied in a textbook.
When we see something we don’t understand, we tend to get confused and try to avoid it or keep it out of our sight as “something different” from us.
We hope that this website will be a starting point for understanding mental health and reducing prejudice. I also hope that by providing reasonable explanations for mental health problems, we can deepen our understanding of how to cope with them and find a path to hope.
We wish you all the healthy everyday life!
