I am so sorry to hear about what you and your wife have gone through. It sounds extremely frustrating and aggravating. I also suspect that when it comes up the people who downplay your wifes' conditions often act as if they are the insulted party.
We have an epidemic of not taking psychological conditions seriously. As my depression has worsened I've understood better the depth to which someone can fall and re-thought when it makes sense to say that I'm having a "depressive episode." I think there's a real issue of people mis-understanding diagnoses (in the way the comment I was replying to spoke about) and describing themselves as having them when their symptoms would not rise to the level of a diagnosis. Un-restrained by medicine and popularized by social media, watered-down understandings of disorders proliferate.
> Co-opting medical language for sub-disorder level dysfunctions is bullshit.
However, this I disagree with. Someone invoking PTSD or Bipolar to characterize their experience is not the same as claiming that label for themselves. I am not bipolar, but I mention the condition to talk about cyclic moods that I do experience (that are neither major depressive or manic but impact me). I think it's common to talk about a disease condition with the understanding that the condition has a range of severity.
I have a friend who was institutionalized for depression for a time. I don't think I am co-opting them to talk about my much less serious case - even though there's a similar "flattening" effect. If people hear my mental health journey first they might assume my friend is putting on airs about their situation. My friend has constantly had people imply or accuse them of overplaying their condition to get special treatment, which is gross.
> how is someone like my wife supposed to be seen or understood, let alone properly accommodated for when everybody thinks they know what a panic attack is but has never in their adult life been so panicked they became nonverbal?
My hope - and it is just a hope - is that on balance the social spread of broad and vague understandings of mental disorders is a net positive overall. The alternative feels like locking these terms away in the medical field - where when your wife (or anyone) says they're having a panic attack and the person who's there to help her has never heard of it. People are often shitty when you are going through a serious illness through ignorance and selfishness and I think medical conditions are the same as physical[1] in this case. I do not think that talking or identifying less with disorders is a net-positive.
All of these conditions have a spectrum of severity and, I believe, many people have sub-diagnostic versions of medical conditions. Those people will often improve their lives by recognizing patterns in their lives and using coping mechanisms developed for people with more severe cases. On balance I think that practice increases empathy for more severe conditions - because once people recognize a trend outside normative experience I think they often can extend it. I've also known far too many people who had life-changing adult diagnoses of conditions ("you mean this isn't what everyone is dealing with") to be set against the popularization of considering if you have a diagnosis.
[1] Mental conditions are, of course, also physical conditions but the dichotomy is widespread.