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[bacasper]

The American Psychiatric Association is once again revamping their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual with newer and more diagnoses.

They get me sick.

Now independent thinkers are considered diseased by psychiatry

Monday, May 17, 2010 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Psychiatrists have been working on the fourth revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and, in it, they hope to add a whole slew of new psychiatric disorders. Unfortunately, many of these disorders are merely differences in personality and behavior among people.

The new edition may include "disorders" like "oppositional defiant disorder", which includes people who have a pattern of "negativistic, defiant, disobedient and hostile behavior toward authority figures." Some of the "symptoms" of this disorder including losing one's temper, annoying people and being "touchy".

Other "disorders" being considered include personality flaws like antisocial behavior, arrogance, cynicism or narcissism. There are even categories for people who binge eat and children who have temper tantrums.

Children are already over-diagnosed for allegedly being bipolar or having attention-deficit disorder (ADD), which results in their being prescribed dangerous antipsychotic drugs. To categorize even more childhood behaviors as psychiatric disorders will only further increase the number of children who will be needlessly prescribed antipsychotic drugs.

Each new revision of DSM has included controversial new additions, and this newest version is no exception. In fact, the manual has increased considerably in size over the years. What is most disturbing about the current proposed revisions is the blatantly brave, new way in which so-called medical professionals are viewing individual characteristics.

Children who exhibit unique eccentricities in accordance with their unique personalities, in general, would be categorized as having a mental illness. If this criteria had been used in past centuries to diagnose illness, there may have never been people like Mozart or Einstein who ventured outside the norm and came up with new or unique ideas.

A Washington Post article captured the essence of this concept perfectly in the following quote:

"If seven-year-old Mozart tried composing his concertos today, he might be diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and medicated into barren normality."

The perception that character differences are somehow a psychic illnesses not only absolves individuals of personal responsibility, but it takes away their unique personhood. It reduces people into subjects that cannot think for themselves, but rather have to be controlled through drugs.

Which brings us to perhaps the biggest thrust behind the DSM revisions: the drug companies. Pharmaceutical companies stand to gain a lot for having virtually every person categorized as mentally ill and in need of drugs.

A more accurate approach to the situation is to assess the psychiatrists and drug lords who are contriving such nonsense as being the true possessors of mental illness. Perhaps these people are the ones that need to be institutionalized.

[Fox]

Yes, the sciences of the mind are hard to be happy with right now. It's not that I don't think the scientific process can be applied to the human mind; I do, I really do. But psychologists and psychiatrists profit first and foremost off of mental defects, and as such it's hardly surprising that anything that can possibly be labelled a defect is labelled a defect. Fotunately, they're here to help, right?

[bacasper]

I agree that many of them do a lot of good. But some of the stuff they are trying to do with this revision is just, well, insane!

Like trying to expand the definition of pedophilia. Richard Green is the man most responsible for the delisting of homosexuality from the DSM in 1975. This is what he has to say in a letter to the editor of the Archives of Sexual Behavior:

Sexual Preference for 14-Year-Olds as a Mental Disorder:
You Can�t Be Serious!!

This letter addresses two papers by the DSM-V Sexual and
Gender Identity Disorders Workgroup member Ray Blanchard
published in this Journal (Blanchard, 2009; Blanchard
et al., 2009).

Having been active in the 1970s struggle to remove homosexuality
from the DSM (Green, 1972), a success that cured
millions of their mental disorder, I am appalled that the ranks
of the disordered may swell, once more in consequence of
sexual orientation.

As a psychiatry professor and graduate of Yale Law
School, I hope I understand the domain of both disciplines.
The DSM proposal trespasses their boundary.

Concern is expressed that ��the current definition of pedophilia
is excluding from specific diagnosis a considerable proportion
of men who have a persistent preference for humans
at an incomplete stage of physical development��(Blanchard
et al., 2009). Whence the 11th commandment, Thou shalt not
have sex with those not fully mature? The Commandment
could have been carved: Thou shalt not have sex with those
before reproductive capacity. This would permit sex with
some 13-year-olds.

In several European countries, the age of legal consent to
have sex falls within the range proposed for the DSM as
signifying mental disorder for the older participant. The age
of consent is 14 in Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia,
Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, and Serbia and
13 in Spain (www.avert.org). If the general culture is accepting
of participation by the younger party, but psychiatry
pathologizes participation by the older party, then the mental
health profession pronounces a moralistic standard and, if
successful, becomes an agent of social control (Moser &
Kleinplatz, 2005).

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is an organization
representing a profession still striving for scientific
respectability.The parody of sciencemasquerading as democracy
made a laughing stock of psychiatry and theAPAwhen it
held a popular vote by its membership on whether homosexuality
should remain a mental disorder (Bayer, 1981).

Decreeing in a few years time that 19-year-olds who prefer
sex with 14-year-olds (5 years their junior) have a mental
disorder, as proposed forDSM-V (Blanchard, 2009), will not
enhance psychiatry�s scientific credibility.

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