DSM 5

The latest version of the DSM is due out soon, (diagnostic and statistical manual version 5, the diagnostic "bible" used for diagnosing mental illness) and is causing controvercy for trying to make things an illness that can be either normal or criminal. Theres some fancy name they given to rape and say its a mental illness, normal childhood boundary testing and many more.

I agree with European doctors who say this is ridiculous, everyone will end up diagnosed with a mental illness and there will be almost no one who's mentally healthy.

The US health care system requires a diagnosis before any treament can be given, I'm guessing this means a doctors or therapists time as well? So a parents having trouble coping with a child having the "terrible two's" a time when they stroppy and won't do as they're told and have tantrums, all perfectly normal, but very stressful for the parents. Parent see's doctor to ask if this is normal and that they don't know how to cope with it. Instead of advise and reassurance and maybe a visit from a health visitor (or equivalent) the child ends up with a diagnosis of some kind of "oppositional disorder" and the parent with depression and anxiety, both have pills.

Drug companies use the DSM and the prevalence of diagnosis to create new drugs. I think this is a self reinforcing circle, if you give something a fancy name, it must be an illness, if its an illness it needs medicating, if it has a medicine then its a real illness called xxx and you need medicine xyz to control it.

I'm really dubious about medicalising normal behaviour, not all normal behaviour is pleasant or comfortable to be around, but it is still normal. I also think that one of the effects of all this medicalising is that people are starting to feel disempowered to help eachother without the input of an "expert". A lot of the time we don't need an expert we need a friend to sit down and share a cup of tea with and listen and exchange experiences with us. Basically to normalise things, how can you know when somethings wrong if you have no idea a baseline normal?

The idea of making something like rape a mental illness horrify's me too, have therapy to get a grip on anger and power issues, yes, but not making the whole thing an illness. If something becomes an illness, then it becomes something we can't help, we have no choice, its not me, its my illness, where does personal responsibility come into it all?

I'm a bit confused about the rape thing. Are we talking about the perpetrator of the crime or the unfortunate subject of the assault?

there are a whole load of children taking ritalin because they behaved normally.

ADHD may well be a condition, but i seriously believe that it is a labelled that is attached to more children than is actually necessary.

Somebody has to buy the drugs, so sometimes they have to invent the illnesses.

Well, if they are adding some new disorders, I want to add one.

Psychotaxonomy Disorder: the overdiagnosing of ordinary behaviour. In which case ALL those DSM psychiatrists must be suffering from it.

And the recommended treatment is..?

I agree, it seems to get ridiculous the way everything is medicalised. There's a strong body of mental health professionals who take the anti-psychiatry approach, and are against diagnoses and take a more social constructionist approach. UEL have hosted a series of conferences called demedicalising misery, where mental health professionals and service users meet to discuss and present on the very issues you've raised, so not all professionals subscribe to the same view. Unfortunately, it's still a minority view. However, I think it is a stance that has an increasing number of supporters.

With regards to the DSM-V, they are also getting rid of some diagnoses, which are causing equal concern. For example, they want to get rid of Asperger's and classify everyone has having ASD. Quite a few people, including many people with Asperger's are quite opposed to this change, and are concerned that it will lead to less understanding of their condition.

In my experience, ICD-10 is used here in the UK, and it's used in the context of 'having' to write a diagnosis in CPA reports etc. Treatment is always more symptom led, rather than diagnosis led, and certainly in training, professionals are taught to be symptom rather than diagnosis led.

yes, thats the USA for you. some human behaviour isn't nice but it doesnt mean the folk that do it are mentally ill at all... its called being bad not mad...

Minnie, its the rapist that they want to medicalise.

melt, I don't think grieving is mad, its horrible to feel and its horrible to watch someone you care about go through it, also having a hissy and shouting swear words when you've had a day where inannimate objects appear to be conspiring against you, isn't pleasant to feel or watch, but neither of them are bad, they're just normal under the circumstances and may actually be a healthy response. These are the sort of things that DSM5 seems to want to medicalise.

SillyT, I'm sort of with you about some illnesses/conditions being a social construct, but in my experience of being on the recieving end of this, is that it often dosent feel very helpful and your'e left feeling ignored and any impetus you may have towards recovery or integration gets disipated in professional wooliness. The good thing about a diagnosis is that it can give you power over something, the power to change it, to take remedial actions or explain to others that there are certain things that you can't help doing or not understanding. I also get that with others, they become the lable they've been given and are disempowered by it. But either way the job of the healthcare professional should be to help a client become more empowered to deal with thier presenting issue, neither written off and drugged by a diagnosis or not given appropriate help because someones issues don't fit with the professionals idea of social construction. Real people have to live in the real world and face its everyday challenges and being told your condition/illness is purely a social construction isn't helping you to live in the same world as everybody else unless that professional can change the whole of societies constructs towards people who behave in certain ways. Although I do get that certain conditions are dealt with much better by those with different social constructs. Both approaches should probably be used.

Having only recently been with Aspergers or ASD, I'm not entirely sure what the difference is, I sort of thought the terms were fairly interchangable and the whole idea of a spectrum was that it includes a range of different symptoms and behaviours, rather than say something like measels where everyone has the same symptoms?