“Fat . . . Borderline . . . Retard . . . .”
It is always shocking to me how easy it is for medical and mental health professionals to reduce their clients to less-than-desirable and less-than-accurate one dimensional labels behind closed doors. I’ve heard excuses that range from 
minimizing (“oh-he-knows-I-don’t-mean-it”) to intellectualizing (“it’s just a short-hand way to refer efficiently to a particular group of symptoms).
Whatever the reason . . . ignorance, mean-spiritedness, or just plain old laziness . . . if you’ve been tempted to mock a client or speak derisively about a client behind closed doors, you might want to check out Tara Parker-Pope’s post on professionals mocking their clients. It’s one of those things that wasn’t discussed in my ethics classes but probably should have been. After all, if we are reducing our clients and all of their complexities to a simple one word label, it’s likely we don’t have our client’s best interest at heart.
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