> The rise of biological psychiatry and its focus on mental illnesses as ‘brain diseases’ had failed to remove the taint of moral and personal failing associate

> The rise of biological psychiatry and its focus on mental illnesses as ‘brain diseases’ had failed to remove the taint of moral and personal failing associated with the majority of psychiatric disorders. But here was a disorder that came packaged with a clear-cut cause that was obviously not the patient’s fault, and which set them in the sympathetic and dramatic light of victimhood. Actually the original definition of PTSD was only supposed to apply to Vietnam veterans who came back from the war, realized what they had done was morally abhorrent, and were no longer able to function because of that realization. However the committee that wrote the DSM ended up stripping out the all the theory behind the disorder before publication. There is a summary of this here: http://www.vva.org/archive/TheVeteran/2005_03/feature_HistoryPTSD.htm http://www.vva.org/archive/TheVeteran/2005_03/feature_Histor... Although the history of PTSD in Ethan Watters book Crazy Like Us is better written.