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I get the point that psychiatrists wanted to avoid over-diagnosing/over-prescribing, but what if they ended up over-prescribing societal shame itself, which is

I get the point that psychiatrists wanted to avoid over-diagnosing/over-prescribing, but what if they ended up over-prescribing societal shame itself, which is after all a very blunt instrument? This is particularly likely to occur if the incentives are aligned to make the problem seem to go away rather than doing the hard work of actually fixing things. In other words, they may not have been preventing or curing anything (at least for the patients who needed the most help).

thaumasiotes 4y ago
> I get the point that psychiatrists wanted to avoid over-diagnosing/over-prescribing But that isn't the point. The point was to prevent people from engaging in pathological behavior by pointing out that that's not something you should do. It's an obvious-but-shouldn't-be-necessary correction to the earlier state where people were admired for being dysfunctional.