Midnight snacker? Compulsive shopper? Bitter? The new edition of the mental health bible may classify you as having a psychological disorder.
The most controversial issue at last week’s annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in San Francisco was the upcoming publication of the DSM-V, the revised edition of the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder. The bible for the mental-health industry—originally published in 1952 and revised about once a decade—the DSM has been translated into 13 languages and is recognized around the world as the authoritative text on mental health.
Even though the APA asked the psychiatrists working on the manual’s revision to sign a nondisclosure agreement, leaked proposed additions to the new version have already stirred debate. “Psychiatrists manufacture mental diagnoses the way the Vatican manufactures saints,” says Dr. Thomas Szasz, an outspoken critic of modern psychiatry and author of Psychiatry: The Science of Lies. This view may be extreme, but some of the new “mental illnesses” under consideration for the new edition nonetheless sound a little…crazy.
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