… Andrew Scull titles his latest essay in the Times Literary Supplement. It looks to be a good summary of the ongoing scandal of the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, but you and I can’t read it without a subscription. Here’s an excerpt (from a post about it in Commonweal):
As diagnostic criteria were loosened [in DSM III], an extraordinary expansion of the numbers of mentally sick individuals ensued. This has been particular evident among, but by no means confined to, the ranks of the young. “Juvenile biopolar disorder”, for example, increased forty-fold in just a decade, between 1994 and 2004. An autism epidemic broke out, as a formerly rare condition, seen in less than one in 500 children at the outset of the same decade, was found among one in every ninety children only ten years later. The story for hyperactivity, subsequently relabelled ADHD, is similar, with 10 per cent of male American children now taking pills daily for their “disease”. Among adults, one in every seventy-six Americans qualified for welfare payments based on mental disability by 2007.
If psychiatrists’ inability to agree among themselves on a diagnosis threatened to make them a laughing stock in the 1970s, the relabelling of a host of ordinary life events as psychiatric pathology now seems to promise more of the same. Social anxiety disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, school phobia, narcissistic and borderline personality disorders are apparently now to be joined by such things as pathological gambling, binge eating disorder, hypersexuality disorder, temper dysregulation disorder, mixed anxiety depressive disorder, minor neurocognitive disorder, and attenuated psychotic symptoms syndrome.
Yet we are almost as far removed as ever from understanding the etiological roots of major psychiatric disorders, let alone these more controversial diagnoses (which many people would argue do not belong in the medical arena in the first place). That these diagnoses provide lucrative new markets for psychopharmacology’s products raises questions in many minds about whether commercial concerns are illegitimately driving the expansion of the psychiatric universe – a concern that is scarcely allayed when one recalls that the great majority of the members of the DSM task force are recipients of drug company largesse.
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New pathologies are breaking out all the time.
There’s a whole other category for Kim Kardashian.
(UD thanks David.)
May 25th, 2012 at 12:06PM
While we are on the topic of pathologies breaking out all the time, consider the inspired suggestion for posttraumatic embitterment disorder (PTED) in DSM-5. I think it captures perfectly the existential position of the birthers and other crazies vis à vis the president. When I watch Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) say he has only one goal, which is to make this incumbent a one-term president, the notion of PTED crosses my mind, too.
May 25th, 2012 at 2:26PM
adam: Post-anything embitterment disorder seems to me an extremely promising category. Post-coitus, post-taxes, post-miracle-diet…
May 25th, 2012 at 3:31PM
… after which we could conjecture an assortment of post faux pas embarrassment disorders, aka shame. Ah, the line between life and label grows thinner with each new DSM.
June 10th, 2012 at 11:55AM
[…] “If psychiatrists’ inability to agree among themselves on a diagnosis threatened to make them a laughing stock in the 1970s, the relabelling of a host of ordinary life events as psychiatric pathology now seems to promise more of the same. Social anxiety disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, school phobia, narcissistic and borderline personality disorders are apparently now to be joined by such things as pathological gambling, binge eating disorder, hypersexuality disorder, temper dysregulation disorder, mixed anxiety depressive disorder, minor neurocognitive disorder, and attenuated psychotic symptoms syndrome. Yet we are almost as far removed as ever from understanding the etiological roots of major psychiatric disorders, let alone these more controversial diagnoses (which many people would argue do not belong in the medical arena in the first place).” Rate this:Share this:TwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the first to like this post. Posted in: Uncategorized […]