When Charlie Sheen spread his psyche across the web, Drew Pinsky and many others had no problem diagnosing him—a person they’d never met. The same thing happened with Jared Loughner--plenty of shrinks were happy to say what was wrong with him despite never having examined him, as were plenty of bloggers. Medical blogging is littered with traps that we can fall into—disease mongering, raising false hopes, violating patient privacy, and skirting around tricky ethical issues. At what point is it OK to discuss symptoms that could indicate mental disorder— and when does it do readers and affected people a disservice? When do efforts to destigmatize disease become advocacy and why do many affected people actually prefer medicalization to other labeling?
