Negotiating an Exit: Existential, Interactional, and Cultural Obstacles to Disorder Disidentification

Abstract

This study highlights a population that has been largely overlooked in sociological research on labeling and identity: people who formerly identified with emotional disorder labels and have chosen to discard them (delabelers). My qualitative analysis of 40 delabelers'narratives explores processes of identification and disidentification by highlighting the tension between individuals' decision to discard their labeled identities and their simultaneous reluctance to relinquish these identities. I characterize this tension as the consequence of existential, interactional, and cultural obstacles to disidentification that are common to delabelers' narratives. These obstacles include both a fear of the consequences of dissociating with the label as well as an attachment to the identity, the community, and the cultural support associated with the disorder label.