Your irascible kid will be ordered to get psychiatric treatments; (Mar. 9, 2010)
Any single behavior of yours has now a psychological label attached to it. An irascible kid is diagnosed “humor deregulation with dysphory”; an eccentric adolescent is treated for “syndrome of psychotic risk”; and if you are into much sex activities then you are labeled “hypersexual troubled person”
A few expert psychiatrists of the American Psychiatry Association (APA) have been efficaciously working for a decade on categorizing and revisiting the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The proposed revisions are published on the APA site are opened for comments till April 20, 2010. The definitive version DSM-V is due on May 2013. Comments, validation studies, complementary evaluations, and the vote of the administration council of APA will deliver the final acceptance decision of this version.
Mental illnesses are intrinsically related to family and community supports, health structures, and mental customs in treatments; all these factors are irrelevant to multinational pharmaceutical companies with interest to globalize definitions of psychiatric syndromes and treatments.
Based on globalize diagnostics and criteria, individuals will be considered suffering from mental troubles, prescribed standardized psychotrops, and health insurance coverage encouraged. The president of APA, Alan Schatzberg, said “The DSM may have incidences on the way individuals perceive others and perceive themselves. It influences the nature of research and their methodologies. There are repercussions in justices, industries, and public health.”
There is no doubt that millions of people will be taking pills that were not necessary in many societies in the first place; they will suffer secondary effects that are more dangerous and harmful than the original ailments. Worse, the revised DSM-V will be imposed globally to include all societies as the definitive Psychiatric Bible. APA will enjoy hegemony in that troubled field.
For example, a “depressed” Nigerian would say he has burning in the head; a Chinese would say he has pain in the shoulders or stomach; a Salvadorian would claim to have sensation of intense corporal heat. Ethan Watters published “Crazy like Us: The globalization of the American Psyche”. There is a terrifying global tendency to de-humanizing people by imposing unified cultural outlooks.
Western, more specifically US, repertory of mental symptoms and treatments is trying to homogenize it globally, as if there are no specificities to various societies differing vastly from Western concepts of mental illness. Since it is Western States that are contributing mostly to natural disasters and catastrophes, then the US medical teams have disseminated their diagnostics related to post-traumatic ailments.
Multinational pharmaceutical industries are heavily lobbying to redefining mental symptoms so that they sell medical pills that DSM might be recommending, especially allowing public health institutions and health insurance to cover the mental disorders expenses.