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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MENTAL DISORDERS TO BE REVISED
Posted by: Darrell Castle
February 17, 2010
Topic: Personal Injury
In an article entitled "Revising Book on Disorders of the Mind," the New York Times tells us that psychiatry seeks to heal itself.
"Far fewer children would get a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. 'Binge eating disorder' and 'hyper sexuality' might become part of the everyday language. And the way many mental disorders are diagnosed and treated would be sharply revised."
"These are a few of the changes proposed on Tuesday by doctors charged with revising psychiatry's encyclopedia of mental disorders, the guidebook that largely determines where society draws the line between normal and not normal, between eccentricity and illness, between self-indulgence and self-destruction-and, by extension, when and how patients should be treated."
So let me get this straight, according to the New York Times this group of doctors meet periodically to decide for the rest of us what is normal and what is not normal, what is illness and what merely eccentric, what is self destruction and what is merely self indulgence. The rest of us are expected to live with their conclusions until they are revised again as the doctors change their collective and individual minds, evolve, or until doctors who are somewhat eccentric, or maybe ill, are appointed to the panel. It occurs to me that this tiny group of doctors has a tremendous power to reorder our society to fit their individual tastes.
I wonder if we have been unduly misdiagnosing people, especially children, for generations, or if we are simply trying to be politically correct and thereby leaving mentally ill people untreated. We don't need to unnecessarily stigmatize people, but were they sick yesterday and well today just because these doctors say so, or were they truly sick? I don't know, I'm not a doctor and I'm not God. Deciding normal used to be his job.
