America’s Epidemic of Psychiatric Over-Diagnosis
Consuelo | 03.07.2013 15:14
More and more people around you are being diagnosed with depression or ADHD, but is that an illusion? There is an epidemic in America, but it’s not an epidemic of psychiatric disorders—it’s an epidemic of over-diagnosis that’s making billions for pharmaceutical companies and the doctors prescribing these drugs.
The Daily Beast-By Jesse Singal-June 21, 2013
We have convinced ourselves that we are a sick, troubled people, and the result has been endless, largely harmful prescriptions—and endless profits for the drug companies. (Matt Rourke/AP)
The next time you’re in a crowded room, look around. A scary percentage of the people in the room with you are suffering from a mental disorder.
Or at least that’s what we’ve been led to believe, that the United States has a crisis on its hands when it comes to mental illness. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), the most recent edition of the bible for psychiatric diagnosis, offers up the current “official” view on what the establishment believes separates the normal from the disordered. Both it and its predecessors have received heaps of criticism for turning the everyday highs and lows of human experience into diseases.
In Saving Normal: An Insider’s Revolt Against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life, Allen Frances, a semi-retired psychiatrist who served as the chair of the task force behind the DSM-IV, uses the release of the DSM-5, the methodology behind which he calls “egregiously reckless,” as a springboard to offer up a stinging rebuke of the explosive rate of psychiatric diagnosis in the U.S.
According to Frances, the U.S. is experiencing a dangerous moment in which political and financial forces are pushing people to think of themselves as abnormal, and “the counterbalancing forces pushing normal don’t remotely counterbalance and aren’t nearly forceful enough.” In other words, there are many people who profit from the idea that a staggering proportion of Americans are mentally ill, and these groups are powerful, well organized, and politically effective. The argument that things aren’t that bad—that the hysteria over attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder or autism is a bit overblown and not backed up by empirical literature—is much harder to make. Given a screeching demagogue and an evenhanded, mild-mannered technocrat, people will always be more drawn to the former.
Related Posts: New Scientist—The diagnosis of mental illness needs its own therapy (0)DSM: The Book of Woe—Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness (2)ABC News: DSM-5 Criticized for Financial Conflicts of Interest—70% of task force members have ties to Pharma (0)Psychiatry bible ‘turns sorrow into sickness’ (0)“Psychiatry’s ‘bible’ could roll out a whole new list of disorders—and more prescriptions for psychoactive drugs” (0)
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is a nonprofit mental health watchdog, Inspired from the Works of L. Ron Hubbard, responsible for helping to enact more than 150 laws protecting individuals from abusive or coercive practices. See
http://www.cchr.org/cchr-reports/child-drugging/introduction.html
We have convinced ourselves that we are a sick, troubled people, and the result has been endless, largely harmful prescriptions—and endless profits for the drug companies. (Matt Rourke/AP)
The next time you’re in a crowded room, look around. A scary percentage of the people in the room with you are suffering from a mental disorder.
Or at least that’s what we’ve been led to believe, that the United States has a crisis on its hands when it comes to mental illness. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), the most recent edition of the bible for psychiatric diagnosis, offers up the current “official” view on what the establishment believes separates the normal from the disordered. Both it and its predecessors have received heaps of criticism for turning the everyday highs and lows of human experience into diseases.
In Saving Normal: An Insider’s Revolt Against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life, Allen Frances, a semi-retired psychiatrist who served as the chair of the task force behind the DSM-IV, uses the release of the DSM-5, the methodology behind which he calls “egregiously reckless,” as a springboard to offer up a stinging rebuke of the explosive rate of psychiatric diagnosis in the U.S.
According to Frances, the U.S. is experiencing a dangerous moment in which political and financial forces are pushing people to think of themselves as abnormal, and “the counterbalancing forces pushing normal don’t remotely counterbalance and aren’t nearly forceful enough.” In other words, there are many people who profit from the idea that a staggering proportion of Americans are mentally ill, and these groups are powerful, well organized, and politically effective. The argument that things aren’t that bad—that the hysteria over attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder or autism is a bit overblown and not backed up by empirical literature—is much harder to make. Given a screeching demagogue and an evenhanded, mild-mannered technocrat, people will always be more drawn to the former.
Related Posts: New Scientist—The diagnosis of mental illness needs its own therapy (0)DSM: The Book of Woe—Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness (2)ABC News: DSM-5 Criticized for Financial Conflicts of Interest—70% of task force members have ties to Pharma (0)Psychiatry bible ‘turns sorrow into sickness’ (0)“Psychiatry’s ‘bible’ could roll out a whole new list of disorders—and more prescriptions for psychoactive drugs” (0)
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is a nonprofit mental health watchdog, Inspired from the Works of L. Ron Hubbard, responsible for helping to enact more than 150 laws protecting individuals from abusive or coercive practices. See
http://www.cchr.org/cchr-reports/child-drugging/introduction.html
Consuelo