Showing posts with label diagnosis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diagnosis. Show all posts

Bad Mental Health Take on Autism - One More from Allen Frances

Before Mental Health Awareness Month draws to its nonconsequential end -- 

Allen Frances

New York Post has published a new interview with Allen Frances about how bad it is to receive a diagnosis, or as he puts it, become a mental patient.

Become a mental patient?

Some background: Allen Frances is a professor emeritus of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University. His fields of research were wide ranging, including personality disorders, chronic depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, AIDS, and psychotherapy. [Note: not autism]. He served as the chair for the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) task force, which published the DSM IV in 1994. He later became the chief critic of the DSM 5, which is a modest revision of his work.

In a nutshell--he didn't like any of the revisions.

As part of Frances's critique of the DSM 5, he wrote Saving Normal, subtitled An Insider's Revolt against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life. His book was published one week before the DSM-5. Since then he has continued the themes of the subtitle.

In addition to my review of his book linked above, I have commented a few times on Frances's statements. I appreciate his concerns about Big Pharma's influence in the treatment of mental illness and inappropriate use of medication, especially in the case of mild depression. His periodic attempts to save normal, not so much.

A couple quotes from his New York Post interview:

Dr. Allen Frances told The Post that he is “very sorry for helping to lower the diagnosis bar.”

Now, Frances said, he fears his work “contributed to the creation of diagnostic fads that resulted in the massive over-diagnosis of autistic disorders in children and adults.”

Stigma Against Mental Illness

One of the themes of Saving Normal is that diagnosis exposes people to stigma. So it would be worrisome to him that so many people are now mental patients, newly exposed to stigma.

I'll grant Francis this point. Prejudice against mental illness is alive and well - and particularly dangerous when it is expressed in the medical field.

There is scant evidence that Stamp Out Stigma campaigns have moved the needle, except on the issue of depression. Judging by news reports, prejudice against people with mental illness has been growing. 

  • Recently, an ex-Marine is lauded as a hero after putting Jordan Neely, a disturbed man on a New York subway, into a choke hold for fifteen minutes. In two days Daniel Penny raised over $1.5 million for his defense against a charge of second degree manslaughter.
  • As politicians regularly blame mass shootings on mental illness, they also routinely reduce funding to address it.


The thing is, prejudice against difference does not stem from diagnosis. It stems simply from difference itself.

A Diagnosis of Autism

In the case of autism, let me suggest an alternative to Francis's view.

From the anecdotal evidence of many people finally diagnosed in adulthood, the diagnosis brings not stigma but relief. They had already been stigmatized throughout childhood. Not by a psychiatric diagnosis, but by the schoolyard diagnosis weird and the classroom diagnosis behavior problem. They grew up being bullied and punished because they were not normal - to use Dr. Francis's favorite word.

People diagnosed with autism in adulthood often already have other diagnoses, most commonly depression and anxiety. They sometimes have experienced suicidal thoughts or attempts. These are the consequences not of their undisclosed diagnosis of autism, but of the way they have been treated by others - on the basis of their difference which it does not take a psychiatrist to notice. It only takes a psychiatrist to explain.

Hence their relief - finally to have an explanation.

The NYP quotes the statistic that rates of autism in the US have soared 500% over the last sixteen years. This is a bait and switch statistic. The DSM 5 changed the definition of autism, combining profound autism, childhood disintegrative disorder, pervasive developmental disorder, and what was once called Asperger syndrome under one umbrella diagnosis, autism spectrum.

Whether or not combining these conditions with different treatment needs under one label was a good idea is a separate discussion. But the change in rates was not as drastic as the statistic suggests. The numbers for three separate diagnoses have been added to the first.

But it is not the first time Dr. Francis has played fast and loose with statistics to claim over-diagnosis. The statistic does not support his thesis of over-diagnosis because the sample population has changed.

Underserved Children with Autism


The article misses the most significant part of the story, reported in the journal Pediatrics. There are significant disparities in rates of diagnosis between white and black children and between affluent and poor children:

Black children were 30% less likely to be identified with ASD-N compared with white children. Children residing in affluent areas were 80% more likely to be identified with ASD-N compared with children in underserved areas.

The consequence of under-diagnosis is that, while rich white kids get services, poor black kids get placed in the school to prison pipeline.

There are real life consequences to under-diagnosis. Poor black kids should not have to pay the cost for Allen Frances's hobby horse.

More Next Week


So clearly, I have thoughts. Lots of thoughts. It's time to sign off for this week and promise more to come. But you are welcome to join the conversation by commenting below!

Why Get Diagnosed with ADHD - And Introducing Jesse Anderson

Am I the oldest new member of the ADHD club? At age sixty-nine, why bother with a diagnosis and treatment?

That was the attitude of my new and now former primary care provider. She said that the prefrontal cortex develops out of ADHD in adulthood, or that people learn workarounds for its difficulties.

She didn't ask about my prefrontal cortex, or whether I had found workarounds. She thought I should just not worry about what I can't do.

As I said, former care provider.

But back to that question - why bother?

Two reasons:

Treatment for ADHD works

Sure, over those many years I developed some workarounds, ways of coping with the challenges of my neurologically divergent (ND) brain.


But they weren't alway sufficient. There were key times in my life when I failed to reach my goals because I couldn't get started, because I couldn't keep going, because I couldn't maintain concentration, because I couldn't remember, because I couldn't turn down the emotional interference that I experienced as a consequence of all the other symptoms. SHAME! Loads of SHAME!

My workarounds got me a certificate in congregational development. But I am not the Rev. DOCTOR Willa Goodfellow, because - I couldn't.

And yet today, I still have more I want to do, big things for which my workarounds have not been sufficient in the past and are not now.

But that pill, that tiny pill, that fraction of a pill after I cut it with my pill splitter, because for me it never takes much. . .

It was like the window opened, the sky was clear, I sat down, like I am right this very minute. . .


And I worked.

That's all. I didn't speed. I didn't stay up late. I didn't go down to the schoolhouse to score some more tabs off a sixth grader.

I simply worked. My brain was clear and in gear. And I got the job done.

There are things I want to do, books I want to write and promote, podcasts on which I want to be a guest, deadlines I want to meet. And one little fraction of a pill has opened the window for me.

Treatment works.

Community for people with ADHD helps

That's the second reason to get diagnosed, community. Just like any other challenging condition, the people who have it can help each other. Breast cancer, kidney cancer, Parkinson's, depression, bipolar, alcoholism, arthritis, eating disorders - whatever you've got, hanging out with others who have it too is huge. Community offers support, reassurance, information, and resources.

Once I knew I had ADHD I no longer felt like I was keeping a shameful secret - my failure to do what everybody else on the planet could do and what I expected myself to do.

And then I discovered others.

Twitter is a godsend for all things diverse, including neurologically diverse. It's where you find the people like you. Because there are people like you.

So if you have or wonder if you have ADHD, head for the bird app. This link will take you to the posts that people have tagged with #ADHD. That's a start.

Jesse Anderson

And this link will take you to Jesse Anderson on Twitter.

Jesse has a newsletter filled with ideas and strategies to help people with ADHD manage our time, energy, and motivation - those workarounds that we all supposedly discover on our own by the time we are sixty-nine. We don't all have to reinvent the wheel by ourselves!

Jesse has a podcast called ADHD Nerds that's just getting started. Personally, I am glad that they come in at around thirty minutes. Because who has the attention span for those ninety minute podcasts? - Not somebody with ADHD! Four episodes so far. I hope he finds it interesting enough to keep it going, because I find it interesting enough to keep listening.

And he's writing a book, Refocus: A Practical Guide to Adult ADHD. Not out yet. When it is, I'll drop a review. But get this - he is inviting input about what should be included. So go to that website; see what's already in the table of contents; send him your own thoughts.

So yeah, folks, even if I am the oldest kid in class, I am glad to have gotten here. I really like the consequences - being able to get stuff done, stuff that matters to me.

And finding my peeps. You rock!

photo of old lady and last meme from memes.com

photo of window to the sky, taken in the Dingle_Peninsula,_Co._Kerry,_Ireland by Maoileann, used under creative commons license

photo of handshake by shark, used under GNU license

How Do You Keep Your Eye on the Ball - Maintaining Attention with ADHD

First step: Get started.

That was the topic of my last blogpost, dealing with the activation aspect of ADHD.

Following my own advice, just now I did two quick little internet tasks and crossed them off my list. Got a dopamine hit off that, like taking one bite of a piece of pie. So now I have a long task in front of me, writing my next blogpost on attention.

Oops, damn. Just took a break to eat a banana. And then I started a timer on one of my games. And now I'm remembering it's a friend's birthday and I haven't sent a card yet.

via GIPHY

NO! I will get back to the blogpost. Ugh. Even with a med on board, this is hard.

So. How do I keep working when my friend really deserves a birthday card and I really want to send it?

Here are my tricks:

How Do You Get Going? Working with ADHD

Screens for ADHD measure five clusters of symptoms: 

  • organizing and activation for work
  • sustaining attention and concentration
  • sustaining energy and effort
  • managing affective interference (emotions that get in the way)
  • utilizing working memory and accessing recall.
The DSM checklist assumes that ADHD is a diagnosis for children. If you didn't have it as a child, you don't have it now.

Well, okay. I am not qualified to quibble with the American Psychiatric Association about how many angels dance on the head of a pin and when they showed up for the dance. But the problem of diagnosis is this: I can't remember which of their criteria I demonstrated in my childhood. And my mother certainly never noticed any struggles that her brilliant and perfect daughter may have experienced in the early 1960s. I mean, she didn't even notice suicidal depression...

So what do I make of that DSM assumption?

CHADD - Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder has this to say about diagnosing adults:

There's That Squirrel Again! How Do I Know if I Have ADHD?

There is a reason why I haven't posted in months. My latest diagnosis -- ADHD -- Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Syndrome -- the adult version.

I have a fistful of posts in my draft file that were never finished before they seemed beside the point. That is not an unusual state for me. Many years ago my brilliant brain was unable to write the doctoral thesis for which I had already conducted extensive field research and had a thorough outline. Periodically I would write whole chapters in my head. But when the laptop was in front of me...

via GIPHY

I was stuck.

We'll see how this post goes.

Diagnosis

Wait a minute. Don't I have bipolar disorder? Where did this new diagnosis come from? What are the chances a person could have both?

Prejudice, Not Stigma: How People with Mental Illness Get Crap Health Care

Eight years ago I published an article titled Doctors' Prejudice Against Mental Illness. It lays out the reasons why it is so damn hard for doctors to learn. Here is a paragraph from that original rant:

Similarly, people with other mental illnesses as well often do not receive routine standard of care for a whole host of conditions, including screens for infections, dental care, metabolic syndrome, even blood pressure checks, even while receiving medications that put them at risk for all of these health complications. As a consequence, the death rate gap between people with mental illness and the rest of the population is growing.

The link in the second paragraph is to a World Psychology article, a review of the literature documenting the crap health care that people with serious mental illness receive, with the consequence that we die an average of ten years sooner than people without mental illness.

The difference in lifespan is only slightly due to suicide. For the most part we die of the same things everybody else dies of, heart disease, cancer, that sort of thing. We just die sooner because our heart disease and cancers are not detected as early, nor treated as aggressively, as everybody else's.

Bipolar Screening - People with Bipolar Know It When We See It

Psychiatrists and people with bipolar both have told me that my book captures what the manic experience is like.

Reviewers tend to say either, She must have written it when she was manic. Too bad her editor didn't fix it. One star. Or: She must have written it when she was manic. So glad her editor didn't fix it. Five stars.

Which gets me thinking: Doctors say bipolar is really hard to diagnose. But if people who have it know it when we see it, what if we wrote a screening tool? Bear with me here. I'm thinking something like this:

They say: A distinct period of abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood.

What we hear is: Are you abnormal?

To which we answer: No. I mean, duh.


So what if they said: Has there ever been a time when everybody around you just didn't understand why the world was so great or why you felt so good? Or has there ever been a time when everybody around you was massively irritating?

Diagnosing Bipolar - Doing Better to Prevent Suicide

How can I be a better psychiatrist for you?

Frankly, I was gobsmacked by that question. It came in response to reading my book, Prozac Monologues: A View from the Edge. The book is a comedic memoir of misdiagnosis and a self-help book for bipolar. It is both uproariously funny and brutally frank about my suicidal episodes, usually at the same time.

There are two directions to go with that question. This particular psychiatrist cares about both.

What kind of behaviors and qualities could he display that would make the relationship more helpful? Honestly, not all psychiatrists are interested in this question. I don't do relationships; I use psychopharmacology to treat psychiatric disorders, a psychiatrist once told me. Well, that had the benefit of clarifying things.

How can I improve my diagnostic skills? Nevertheless just about any psychiatrist wants to get the answer to the puzzle right, even the ones who treat patients as no more than a puzzle.

Will This Trauma Never End?

I found this video while trying to survive the cluster f*ck of misdiagnosis, antidepressants, mixed episodes, and a psychiatrist and therapist who didn't know what they didn't know, so it must be me and maybe I had borderline personality disorder - the go to diagnosis for patients that the professionals are tired of.

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass. And in fact, it did. I survived to... today? I offer it to everybody who is trying to survive the current COVID cluster f*ck in the US.

Is It Time to Call a Therapist?

There is a difference between feeling depressed and having depression, which makes it hard to figure out what we need right now when - doesn't everybody feel like crap?

What you are feeling right now might be the entirely normal reaction to this currently abnormal world. Here is what's happening: everybody is experiencing trauma at the same time. Exhaustion, trouble concentrating, insomnia, hopelessness, these are common physical, emotional, and cognitive reactions to trauma. They are also symptoms of a depressive episode. And depression, the illness of depression can lead to serious complications, substance abuse, relationship problems, suicide. Not to mention that it simply sucks the joy out of living. Depression, the illness needs to be treated.
So do you need to see a doctor? It depends. A recent New York Times article can help you sort it out.

Misconceptions about Antidepressants

What do you think are the most common misconceptions about antidepressants?


Prozac Monologues: A Voice from the Edge is at the press kit stage with Q&A in development. My publicist wants me to answer questions that interviewers might ask. My responses should be in the three to seven sentence range, she says.

Three to seven sentences are not my forte. I am doing my best and taking comfort that in an interview format, there might be a follow-up when I can say more.

They are good questions and worth a blog series, I think, where I can expand to three to seven paragraphs. Mostly seven. Maybe more. Plus, you know, pictures. So that's what you get for a few weeks.

No, antidepressants are not happy pills

Giving Thanks for John McManamy

John McManamy was my introduction to the concept of expert patient, a mental illness educator with lived experience and serious chops, research-wise.

Our relationship began not long after Prozac Monologues, the blog began in 2009, with a skunk. How on earth did I find his tale of too-close-but-thankfully-not-the-worst-sort-of-too-close encounter with a skunk? Probably I googled amygdala. That tells who John is right there. You want to know about amygdala? John will tell you a story about a skunk.

World Bipolar Day and the Color Red

Prozac Monologues -- the book -- is coming!  It really is.  Well, a chapter and a half still to go.


Here is a sneak peak that may answer the burning question,

Why are you wearing red on World Bipolar Day?  

It's called:
Three

Have you ever noticed -- flight of ideas, distraction, talking fast/pressure to keep talking -- these are symptoms of a serious mental disorder (we're talking the manic phase of bipolar here) and also kind of -- fun.

Saving Normal -- The Diagnosis Game

For readers unencumbered by the facts of the matter or any understanding of them, Allen Frances' book Saving Normal is an entertaining romp through the world of psychiatric diagnosis which will support your deepest held suspicions: that there are a few seriously wacko people out there who are very different from the rest of us, but for the most part, mental illness is a sham and you need to just snap out it.

Not to tip my hand, or anything.

The claims made without benefit of facts will take some time to sort through. And a later post will support part of Frances' agenda. In fact, support it enthusiastically. But not this one.

The APA's Cocktail Party, 2009

Doctors' Prejudice Against Mental Illness

One in four people in the United States meet the criteria for a diagnosable mental illness in any given year.  About half will develop a mental illness sometime in their life.  Allen Frances, editor in chief of DSM-IV wants fewer people, only those with the most serious illness, to be diagnosed to spare them the stigma of the diagnosis.  The chief mechanism to achieve his goal would be to change the DSM criteria, so that fewer people qualify.

This series began by introducing Dr. Frances, whose work has inspired it.  It continues to address the topic of stigma, what it means, where it comes from, how to respond.  Last week I defined terms, adding one that expands our frame.  Briefly, Merriam-Webster says that stigma is a mark of shame or discredit; while prejudice is injury or damage resulting from some judgment or action of another in disregard of one's rights.

I think it is important to distinguish between the two.  To do so, one has to clarify the context.  Stigma, when used by somebody who is the object of stigma, is the internalization of somebody else's prejudice. When it is used by somebody else, stigma is a mechanism of diversion that calls on the object of one's own prejudice to bear the responsibility of that prejudice.

So is Allen Frances trying to protect those whom he calls the worried well from being marked with shame or discredit?  Or is he creating a diversion that calls on people who are suffering to bear the responsibility for somebody else's prejudice?

DSM-5 - Passé Before Published

Most of Allen Frances' ranting against DSM-5 bounces back to hit his own DSM-IV just as well.  He acknowledges this in the preface of Saving Normal, which he says is part mea culpa.  You could sum his argument against DSM-5 as It's DSM-IV, only more so!  We could all find some consensus around that line.

So while I am not pleased with this man's rants [did you pick up on that last week?], I do not come to praise DSM.  To keep us all on the same page, I am reposting my piece from November, 2011.  What I wrote below referred to DSM-IV.  Most of it applies to DSM-5, as well.  The differences between the two do not a difference make in my own critique.  The fatal flaw in DSM-5 is that it is DSM-IV's little brother.  That's what Thomas Insel is talking about...

Introducing Allen Frances

Allen Frances was the editor of the DSM-IV, first published in 1990.  He is now the fiercest critic of its next major revision, the DSM-5.  For over three years, he has been blogging weekly to this end at Psychology Today.  This week I will summarize his steady drumbeat.  I hope soon to publish an open letter to him.

Frances' complaint in a nutshell is that the DSM-5 creates fad diagnoses and changes criteria of older diagnoses to medicalize a whole range of normal behavior and miseries.  The link lists these problem diagnoses and a number of the following points, in an article published all over town last December.

These issues have been discussed widely, in public and private circles.  I am not qualified to address each point, though I did give a series over to one of them, the bereavement exclusion.  The best of the batch, if I do say so myself, is Grief/Depression III - Telling the Difference, which got quoted in correspondence among the big boys.

Looking Under the Hood - A Better Depression Diagnosis?

Corrected July 7, 2013

Maybe my writer's block is an Ecclesiastes issue.  There is nothing new under the sun.

But finally, there is.  No, not the DSM.  Keep reading.

The DSM. Sigh.

But regarding the DSM, and it makes no difference at all which edition, you have to wonder when somebody who is suicidal, losing weight, irritated at the drop of a hat and can't sleep gets the same diagnosis as somebody else who is immobile, gaining weight, couldn't be bothered about anything anymore and sleeps the night and day away.  It's all depression -- the DSM's junk drawer.

Finally, somebody thought to sort the junk drawer, by looking inside the brains of these two sorrowful souls, both taking the same meds for God's sake.

PET Scans - Looking Under the Hood

Helen Mayberg and her team at Emory University School of Medicine used PET scans to look under the hood (to use John McManamy's favorite metaphor).  PET scans use a radioactive tracer to determine where glucose is being used in the brain, i.e., what part of the brain is busy.

Thomas Insel - Toward a New Understanding of Mental Illness




Cutting this guy's budget is like telling Orville and Wilbur Wright to take the month off.

Defending DSM-5 -- Sort Of

Good mental health reporting takes research, careful analysis, nuance and a whole lot of work.  And in the end, it doesn't sell newspapers.  Which is why you see so much bad mental health reporting, even where you thought you'd find better.


[I like to think that opening sentence explains why I post no more often than once a week.  I work to provide a quality product.  But that is for you to judge.]

The long awaited publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Edition V has generated a blizzard of easy-to-whip-off articles with sensationalist headlines, just the thing for you to share on Facebook on a boring weekday afternoon, and get a nice Ain't it awful rant going among your friends when, really, you should be doing your life.

The Spectre of the Butterfly Net

Most of these articles follow the same tired theme, Psychiatrists are out to diagnose half the population, turning normal human conditions into mental illnesses, because they are in cahoots with the pharmaceutical industry to put the nation on medication.

These articles write themselves.  Pick any diagnosis that the DSM-V has dared to update from a work last revised nineteen years ago, add a quote from the disgruntled old man who was editor-in-chief of said nineteen-year-old document, which only barely tinkered with the 1980 edition anyway, plug in a statistic on drug sales, and there you have it.

Next, pick another diagnosis, substitute a humanistic psychologist for the disgruntled old man, and you are good to go with next week's article.

I, who love links, am not going to link to any of this trash.

Now I have my problems with the DSM.  But I do have some sympathy for its revisers, caught in the middle of a sea change, trying to update a system that will be tossed into the deep within the decade, and would have been already, if we spent any halfway reasonable amount of money on research.

For now I will do my own op ed piece and offer for your consideration the following assertion, based on my own experience in the system and reports of friends who have been at this a whole lot longer:

There are no psychiatrists running around on the streets, chasing toddlers with temper tantrums, trolling funeral parlors for grieving widows, whipping up business.  People!  There are not enough psychiatrists to deal with the loonies already identified.  They do not need you!

You don't get to see a psychiatrist and submit to trial by DSM until

  • denial
  • snapping out of it
  • hiding
  • behavioral modification
  • herbal remedies
  • and prayer

have not worked, and there is no choice but to go where you do not want to go, in the face of your drinking buddies who all tell you, You'd have to be crazy to see a psychiatrist.

Well, maybe you are.  Maybe you are on the knife's edge.  Be prepared to stay there a while longer.  It will take three months to get an appointment.  Longer, if you don't have insurance.

Seriously, they don't need you.

Diagnosis is Your Best Friend

Do you know anybody who has suffered for years with some unidentified illness, bouncing from doctor to doctor, treatment plan to treatment plan, feeling crazy and out of control, because there is no reasonable explanation for these vague, though debilitating symptoms that come and go, and your friend begins to think that you all think he/she is crazy and not really sick at all?  Lyme Disease, Fibromyalgia, TBI, MS, ALS, Lewy Bodys...

The day that person receives a diagnosis, even a difficult one, is a day of rejoicing.  Now he/she knows, can make plans, can learn about the illness, follow a course of treatment, maybe even find one that helps.

Diagnosis, if it is the right diagnosis, even if it is more serious than the previous diagnosis, even if you really, really don't like the diagnosis, is the first step toward recovery.

I mean, think about it.  If you get out of breath climbing a flight of stairs, do you listen to your friends tell you to rest mid-flight?  Or do you go to a doctor who might tell you that you have a blocked artery?  Is the doctor drumming up business?  Or is he/she saving your life?

Mental Illnesses are Made of Normal Experiences

Let's break out some dialectical thinking.  I know, it's hard.  That is why mental health reporters for USAToday and even the New York Times don't ask you to do it.  Prozac Monologues does ask you to do it.  But we can take it slow.

First, what is dialectical thinking?  It is when you hold two truths that seem to contradict each other in your mind at the same time.  Truth is not about either/or.  It is mostly both/and.

So our first statement is this:

Mental illnesses are made of normal experiences.  Everybody gets sad.  Everybody gets angry.  Everybody gets up in the morning sometimes and just can't get started on the day.  Everybody who walks by a group of scary people thinks they are saying bad things.  Everybody catches something out of the corner of the eye that isn't really there.  Everybody throws something against the wall.  Everybody persists in believing something that is false.  Everybody has an occasional impulse to jump off the bridge.

The symptom lists of the DSM are filled with behaviors that everybody does.

News Flash:  Us loonies inhabit the same planet as everybody else.

That is the first truth in our venture into dialectical thinking.  And it is the source of all those headlines about how the DSM is turning normal behavior into mental illness.  How is this for a thought -- mental illness really is not that weird after all.

The Suffering of Mental Illnesses is not Normal Suffering

But.  Here is the other statement to hold in your mind while remembering the first one:

There is a difference.  You get a diagnosis of some sort of mental illness when a whole lot of normal experiences and a whole lot of normal suffering pile up beyond your ability to function in a normal world.

That's it.  If you are not at the end of your rope, you do not have a mental illness.  Rather you are having a bad day, or week, or year.  If you are functioning well in the world, you do not make an appointment with a psychiatrist, and do not receive a diagnosis.  And the psychiatrist is just fine with that, because he/she doesn't have time to see you anyway.  The DSM is not about you, and does not try to be about you.  So leave it alone and let it help those of us who need its help.

When your loved one dies, you will not be diagnosed with depression just because you are going through a normal grieving process.  A normal grieving process looks like depression, but only on the surface.

If what you have is Major Depressive Disorder, then you don't go through a normal grieving process.  You don't think about your loved one; you don't remember the good times; you don't share those scandalously funny pokes in the ribs during the funeral; you don't cling to your sister; you don't even get mad at the person who deserted you by dying.  You just sit under a black cloud and think about how miserable you are.  So you do not get better, and -- get this -- you do not do normal grieving, until you get treated for your depression.

Grieving widows are in no danger from the DSM, if their grieving really is normal.

When your child throws a temper tantrum, you don't run out for a diagnosis of Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder.  A badly behaved child has good days and bad days.  If the parents are consulting with school and other resources and genuinely working on the issue, things get better.  When they have tried every recommendation in the book, when they fear for their lives, when the child is out of control and scared and miserable about his/her own behavior, and this has gone on for years...

then it is insulting, it is cruel and it is simply not helpful to tell these parents that there is nothing wrong with their child and that the doctor's attempts to figure it out are part of some grand conspiracy that threatens to medicalize normal behavior.  If you don't know, if you have not walked in their shoes, then shut the hell up.

Naughty children are not diagnosed in the DSM, if they can get better without it.

Diagnosis of Mental Illness is Not Easy

The DSM V does not make diagnosis easier.   Yeah, well -- diagnosis of any sort got more complicated when they threw over the four humours theory.

There is more to say in the DSM's defense.  I will get to it.  It will make me work and make you think.  And I don't imagine you will share it on Facebook.

Oh well.  My ad revenue never did pay the mortgage.

flair from Facebook.com

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