Psychiatry Gone Wacky
December 16, 2011
BY DICK METHIA
The American Psychiatric Association has got my cranky synapses firing again. Periodically that venerable organization unveils a revision of its “bible,” the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, mercifully abbreviated “DSM.” I wouldn’t recommend this psychiatric encyclopedia as a fun read unless you’re an insomniac. You’ll be in lullaby land before you get through the Table of Contents.
The DSM is a guide to diagnosis with huge implications for who gets mind-rattling drugs. “It not only determines how mental disorders are diagnosed,” explains APA president Alan Schatzberg, “it can impact how people see themselves and how we see each other.”
Aye, there’s the rub!
Among the APA’s new disorders are binge eating and gambling addiction. They’re considering adding Internet addiction as well. (I’m not making this up.)
If you’re struggling to stay on a diet, doesn’t it make you crazy (sorry, upset) to know that the behemoth scoffing down four Big Macs and following it up with two huge sundaes is suffering from a psychiatric disorder rather than lack of self-control?
And “Internet addiction”? Come on! Just pull the plug. I’m no fan of Nancy Reagan, but “Just say no!” sounds like a smarter prescription than Prozac.
The APA says that children who throw tantrums will now be afflicted with “temper dysregulation with dysphoria.” How about that four-year old screaming in the candy aisle with a fistful of teeth-rotting chocolate bars? If Mommy doesn’t shut him up, I’ll be the one needing meds. I hate to think what happens when bratty Junior grows up and learns his behavior is “dysphoria,” not bad manners.
If the APA has its way, “eccentric” teens would be labeled with “psychosis risk syndrome.” Thanks to our psychiatric guardians the next generation of nerdy creative teens like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs will spend months on a psychiatrist’s couch instead of in garages hammering out brilliant innovations.
Males with a super sex drive “suffer” (ahem) from what the APA now calls “hypersexual disorder.” What a gift for groping governors, horny golfers and the bordello brotherhood. Instead of censure for loutish behavior, they’ll get sympathy for a psychiatric disorder and a fistful of pills. The sluttish Hollywood director who lures young would-be starlets into his office will simply jump from the casting couch to the psychiatrist’s couch.
Jerome Wakefield, himself a psychiatrist and educator at New York University, points out, “By massively pathologizing people under these categories, you tend to put them on an automatic path to medication, even if they are experiencing normal distress.” Amen!
I’m not trivializing the pain of people suffering real psychiatric illness, but the APA seems too ready to label, excuse (and medicate) behaviors that are naturally part of coping with the complex challenges of daily life.
During the Bosnian conflict in 1993 a reporter was interviewing refugees during the savage destruction of Sarajevo. He stumbled upon a bomb shelter in which a group of youngsters were huddled around a candle. To the reporter’s amazement, with bombs rattling the walls around them, the children were focused on their math homework. The children explained to the reporter that when the bombing stopped and they returned to school, their teachers would expect the work to be done. The American Psychiatric Association would probably label this “unduly attentive to duty syndrome.”