Perspectives on the Future

Abstract

This chapter explores the perspectives people have on a future living with a diagnosis. A diagnosis implies a ‘dysfunctioning’, a label, a deficit, an ‘abnormality’. How to think about the balance between finding recognition in the diagnosis on the one hand, but having to deal with the stigma society connects to the diagnosis on the other hand? Should you tell people or not? Do people still take you seriously after you tell them? Telling, for instance, your boss about your diagnosis can mean you receive some helpful benefits, but it can also lead to the fact that you are deemed unfit to perform certain tasks you consider yourself perfectly fit to perform. This chapter also deals with how society sometimes tends to patronise people with a diagnosis, while this is certainly not what they ask for.