Blog #4: American Psychiatric Association Under Fire for New Disorders

In May 2013, the American Psychiatric Association is schedule to publish the DSM, a “900-page “bible” of psychiatric symptoms”, which is supposedly “medical-izing” behaviors that some people would consider normal, but will be classified as “mentally ill”. Such symptoms and classifications as Shyness, Grief, and Eccentricity, but if more than 11,00 petitioners stand against these new symptoms then the DSM will be re-edited and revised accordingly. 

            These new diagnoses not only are going to label people who exhibit these behaviors as having a mental illness, but also qualify them for psychiatric drugs and help that could create harmful and serious side effects. A chairman of the committee behind the petition to these new findings, David Elkins, says, “We are concerned about the normal kids and elderly people who are going to be diagnosed with these disorders and treated with psychiatric drugs. We think that’s very, very dangers.”

            This new development of new disorders is something that is going to allow just about anyone to clarify themselves as having a mental disorder. The APA is broadening the horizon of mental illness to a whole new level. There are boundaries that must be maintained within in the health field to keep those that are “sick” “sick” and those that are “healthy” “healthy’. You can’t have a sick person, unless there is a “healthy” to counter it.

With more diagnoses of people with mental disorders comes this new line of psychiatry and prescription. Allowing children and elderly people, as mentioned before, to be put on new medications, is deviating completely from a norm, not to say people with mental disorders are not normal. But to classify and prescribe a child due to “shyness” is absurd and going to create a dependency on some drug that the child may not need. This will create a wider social gap between groups of people, and probably lead to segregation from the vast group classified as “mentally ill” and those that are not. The world already faces plenty of problems with discrimination to the mentally disabled and to add more people to them, will create the mentally-abled the minority, especially if a diagnosis is cuffed onto children who sulk and throw temper tantrums.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/dsm-millions-diagnosed-mental-illness/story?id=15556263#.TzWEFM18DlM