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The politics of the DSM — 15 Comments

  1. If I remember correctly, wasn’t homosexuality dropped from the disease/abnormal category during the last DSM revision, due to pressure from various homosexual activists/groups/psychiatrists and, in particular, because of a rigged vote on this issue by psychiatrists at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association?

  2. During my undergrad years I worked for a year as an aide ( “Mental Health Worker”) in a private psychiatric hospital before I took a course in Abnormal Psychology.

    My reaction to all the classification terminology in the Abnormal Psych course was that it was by and large useless in dealing with on the ward situations. In writing up notes in the psych hospital we were instructed to write what we observed, what we believed to be the dynamics behind what we observed, and our action/reaction to the situation. The writing guidelines were also useful in deciding how to react. Much more useful than the brouhaha of the Ab Psych classification/terminology.

  3. Will Messiah Complex still be considered a disorder? Wonder if All Tingly In The Legs syndrome made it?

  4. This indeed is an interesting subject, neo. And I do not use the word “interesting” as the antonym for interesting.

    Aren’t most of our arguments about religion, politics, social standard, and getting a divorce — to one degree or another –arguments as to who is the crazy one?

    Does make for an interesting life.

  5. Greetings:

    When I took “Abnormal Psychology” back in college (back when homosexuality was still included) I remember the professor telling the class that they would find themselves on every page and that they would be wrong.

  6. “…there must be a diagnosis for that somewhere.”

    The one about insanity defined as the repetition of the same behaviour, while hoping for a different outcome; Oh, what relief, it’s time for my soma now, good night….

  7. Actually, I think the diagnosis would be ‘naivete’. But there may be a large overlap between that and ‘liberal’, since the latter seems immune to learning from history.

  8. The present medical model, ICD-9, has been in use for a generation, so there are seriously outdated diagnoses; see lymphomas, for example. The update, ICD-10 has been in draft form for several years; but that’s the committee-consensus, WHO way.
    I will ask Neo to back up her charges re politics, fashion and special interests re ICD-9 with a few examples. I have no argument with her position on DSM.

  9. Tom: The drug companies are involved heavily in the definitions of certain illnesses, such as when a person has high cholesterol that needs treating. The research is iffy in many ways, but the recommendations to treat keep widening, and more and more drugs are sold.

    There are also fashions in treatment—such as the widespread use of certain heart surgeries, and then later on more and more indication that many cases do just as well or better with medication.

    Very often recommendations of all sorts are made with little evidence, and then when the research comes in it turns out to be the opposite of what was thought (such as, for example, hormones for post-menopausal women to prevent heart disease).

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