Tag Archives: dsm

Fox News: A psychiatrist tells the truth— it’s OK not to be ‘normal’

When Mark Twain’s hero Huckleberry Finn was forced to study spelling for an hour every day, he said, “I couldn’t stand it much longer. It was deadly dull, and I was fidgety.” His teacher, Miss Watson, threatened him with eternal damnation if he didn’t pay attention. Huck admits it didn’t seem like such a bad alternative. “But I didn’t mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn’t particular.”

If that had happened today, Huck would have been diagnosed as ADHD, put on Adderall, and forced to attend school, while the book about his adventures would never have been written.

The American Psychiatric Association invented the term “ADHD” in 1980 to give kids with hyperactivity, impulsivity, short attention span and easy distractibility a diagnosis.

Who would have thought that 28 years later, the National Center for Health Statistics would report that over 5 million American kids (8 percent) between the ages of 3-17 would receive this diagnosis? That’s 1 out of 12, with about half of those on medication.

Grief is not an illness- Medicalising normal human emotion is not only dangerously simplistic, but flawed.

Should grief be classified as a mental illness? Editors from The Lancet, a highly regarded medical journal, argue no.

The recently published editorial warned against prescribing antidepressants to treat grief, arguing that “medicalising” a normal human emotion is “not only dangerously simplistic, but also flawed”.

The warning has been prompted by the release of the draft version of the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). In this upcoming edition of the ‘psychiatrist’s bible’ there is no exclusion for bereavement in the diagnosis of a major depressive disorder.

This means that “feelings of deep sadness, loss, sleeplessness, crying, inability to concentrate, tiredness, and no appetite, which continue for more than 2 weeks after the death of a loved one, could be diagnosed as depression, rather than as a normal grief reaction.”

Millions mistakenly classed mentally ill—including shy or defiant children, grieving relatives

MILLIONS of healthy people – including shy or defiant children, grieving relatives and people with fetishes – may be wrongly labelled mentally ill by a new international diagnostic manual, specialists said recently.

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Healthy people who are shy may be wrongly classified as mentally sick in a new health manual issued by the American Psychiatric Association. AFP/SOURCES

In a damning analysis of an upcoming revision of the influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health experts said its new categories and “tick-box” diagnosis systems were at best “silly” and at worst “worrying and dangerous”.

Latest list of mental disorders leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth

It has come to my attention that I am mentally ill.

I always knew I was neurotic – who isn’t? – but it still comes as something of a surprise to learn that I am suffering from an actual mental illness. Others, perhaps, will not be surprised in the least.

The particular mental illness that afflicts me was added only recently to the so-called Bible of psychiatry, otherwise known as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This is the big reference book that officially catalogues all the mental illnesses recognized by modern psychiatry. The latest edition is nearly 1,000 pages. You would have to be almost pathologically normal to find nothing in there that applies to you.

American Psychiatric Association’s Push to Broaden Definitions of Mental Disorders Sparks Revolt

A panel appointed by the American Psychiatric Association is proposing changes to the industry’s guide for mental illnesses, which determines how patients are diagnosed and treated, and whether insurers pay for care. The new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is scheduled to be published next year.

“Everyday disappointments, sufferings and eccentricities are being redefined as psychiatric disorders, and that could lead to medication treatment,” said Frances, a professor emeritus at Duke University who lives in San Diego, California. “This is expanding the boundaries of psychiatry.”