I posted recently about the indomitable march of medicine and how the medical establishment, if not people in general, is terrified by the thought that death is natural and even quite proper.
Now it seems the same problem is happening in the field of mental health. It's getting ever harder to be in a bad mood without having a diagnosis attached to it.
Now it seems the same problem is happening in the field of mental health. It's getting ever harder to be in a bad mood without having a diagnosis attached to it.
I think that the APA risks more than just diagnosing us all to mental problems by heavily expanding its DSM guide book: It risks making the entire field of Psychiatry look like a joke (is it already?)
ReplyDeleteThe DSM, for all of its flaws, is a pretty well respected medical tome. By heavily expanding it for version 5, with such great names as post-traumatic embitterment disorder, the APA is blurring the line between real illnesses and fake ones. The fact that they've been doing this for years should give us all pause when thinking about things like ADD and ADHD, but this time it seems like they're really going over the top.
At some point this is going to undermine the credibility of the DSM and the entire field of psychiatry.
I see this as a problem because a lot of the mental disorders listed in DSM actually exist, and I'm glad there is a "responsibly" published book to tell my psychiatrist what to look for. If the book becomes a joke, however, then the shrinks will start sounding even more like quacks...and that doesn't do anybody any good, especially those with serious clinical mental problems
You're right that they risk making a joke of themselves, which wouldn't help anybody and could misdirect treatment efforts. I'm also worried about it from a social perspective. If everybody is mentally ill with some condition or other, what happens to responsibility? Just like the woman who sued McDonald's for hot coffee, I can imagine kids being upbraided for not playing with a miserable classmate. The classmate suffers and is not responsible for being miserable, so the responsibility is shifted to others. If every social tic or bad day can be chalked up to a condition (and conditions are naturally the shrinks' responsibility), where does the buck stop?
ReplyDeleteI remember when I lost most of my respect for psychology as a putative science: When I found out that narcissistic personality was considered a disease and that apparently some judges thought it violated the Americans With Disabilities Act to fire someone with said "disorder." Suddenly a horrible, self-centered, thin skinned, spiteful human being became someone we ought to pity and make special allowances for.
ReplyDeleteThanks Rusty! Narcissists are disabled - that explains the able-bodied degenerates who park in the handicapped spaces!
ReplyDelete