5 ms·
If anyone is interested in this topic, I'd highly recommend reading the Book of Woe [0]. Mental health diagnoses have been based on the DSM for nearly 75 years,
by graaben 6y ago
If anyone is interested in this topic, I'd highly recommend reading the Book of Woe [0]. Mental health diagnoses have been based on the DSM for nearly 75 years, however it's an extremely flawed book to say the least. The creation of each version has also been a very contentious and political process, leading to major influence from pharmaceutical companies and others with financial motives.
The problem with mental health diagnostics though is that there really is no good alternative yet, so for the foreseeable future we will be making huge, life altering decisions for people based on what is essentially a subjective judgement call.
[0]https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/310517/the-book-of-woe-by-gary-greenberg/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/310517/the-book-of-...
- shimonabi 6y agoAdam Curtis also explored this topic: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6f1bj https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6f1bj It seems to me that what is "normal" is mostly defined by the political system.
- Nav_Panel 6y agoYeah, this was one of Foucault's major points, as well as several other "anti-psychiatry" thinkers in the 70s (most notably Thomas Szasz): "mental illness" is always a normative stance, and is incredibly useful politically.
- shimonabi 6y agoFoucault was an anti-science obscurantist. Postmodernists have nothing to say. I posted the wrong link. Here is the right one: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6f1bjq https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6f1bjq
- Nav_Panel 6y agoWhat the hell are you so mad about? Most contemporary critics of postmodernism are themselves implicitly entrenched in postmodern thought lmao
- kodachi 6y agoThere was a quote I couldn't find that said something like we are fortunate that millions of people share our same delusions/world-view that us and that kept us from the asylum.
- zumu 6y agoYou should mention the DSM is purely an American text, while the ICD is what's used most everywhere else. This the DSM primarily captures the zeitgeist of American psychiatric opinion.
- TheOperator 6y agoMy favourite part of psychiatry is that diagnosis never shrinks, it only grows, and this makes people healthier and the increase in mental illness is just us "discovering" that people were mentally ill all along. The field is an endless dynamo of medicalization because they serve as a gatekeeper to funding, and if you throw enough money at anybody start to feel better, which creates an incentive for more and more to get diagnosed. For a broad swathe of new people to be diagnosed as mentally ill does not require biological evidence, or even proof that the classification improves patient outcomes, it just requires abusing the criteria used in broad all-encompassing intrinsically political typologies (Like DSM-V) until you can hammer most of the population into the mentally ill box. The diagnosis's aren't falsifiable and in multiple cases attempts to falsify a diagnosis proves the diagnosis. There are also various absurdities with this status quo. The literal meaning of what a mental illness actually is in in flux and has literally changed multiple time over an older adults lifetime. If you meet 5 criteria you're healthy and get no assistance, if you meet 6 criteria you're definitely disabled. A bad reaction to an environment causing issues, the classic example being the child fidgeting after sitting in a desk for 8 hours being diagnosed with ADHD, leads to the child being blamed instead of the environment. I don't think psychiatrists have no role in society I am just heavily sceptical that they're actually scientists, they seem like people using applied science like engineers.
- DanBC 6y agoProbably important to mention that this is strongly cultural and in many countries (eg, not the US) we don't see the massive over-pathologisation of normal ranges of human experience.