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This research explores the experiences of Beth, a university student in the UK, as she comes to be labelled as 'dyslexic', and as she has her diagnosis taken away. Through use of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and discourse analysis, the research seeks to understand how Beth made sense of these experiences, and to explore the discursive 'life' of dyslexia within this sense-making. The discussion in this paper proceeds chronologically through Beth's story, from 'struggle', to 'legitimation' to 'derogation', and concludes with a call to recognise the role of diagnosis in the field of special educational needs (SEN) from a social constructionist and relational perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, the number of students in the UK with diagnoses of mental health or psychiatric conditions is rising, as are the number of students categorised as having a special educational need or disability (SEND). To support these students' objective evidence of deficit or difficulty is required, this usually takes the form of a legitimising diagnosis. However, in the case of mental health conditions, social, emotional and behavioural problems or even in some neurodevelopmental disorders, diagnosis is less useful as there are fundamental problems with the classification and understanding of mental health conditions. Despite this, the prevalence and importance of diagnosis remains in supporting students in education and those who are categorised as SEND. Therefore, this paper seeks to discuss the place that diagnosis has in education and the alternative models that exist in an effort to understand potential other avenues of supporting students and the benefits and limitations of these. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Hysteria" and "hystero-epilepsy" were common medical diagnoses among physicians during the nineteenth century. In Paris, L'Hôpital de la Salpêtrière—originally a hospice for the poor and a prison for prostitutes and other female inmates—became a center of great interest for the possible role of neurological diseases in these conditions. At the same time in the Americas and Europe, gynecologists were removing women's ovaries in cases with the same clinical conditions, which emphasized the role of the ovaries in contemporary hysteria studies in France, Great Britain, and the United States. The objective of this article is to explore nineteenth-century conceptualizations of ovarian pain as an organ-pathological substrate for a portion of these diagnoses. The theoretical role of the pelvic organs in these diagnoses has waxed and waned over the centuries, but there have not been many detailed explorations of the associated clinical phenomena. Suggesting an organic basis (le substratum organique) for the diagnoses remains a precarious notion, given the universally repudiated role of the uterus and decreasing interest in the ovary. In contemporary literature, the potential role of the ovary has not been addressed from a detailed medical perspective, however. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]