Reply to comment

My post is completely unrelated to last week’s discussion. Instead, I want to comment on a recent New York Times article called Revising Book on Disorders of the Mind about changes made to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). This article reminded me of the New York Times article we discussed on the first day of class called The Americanization of Mental Illness. While I understand that many the DSM must be updated and must evolve with the development of psychiatry, I find it so appalling that this book single-handedly defines what can and cannot be considered normal and abnormal behavior.  The changes proposed to be made in DSM-5 have been controversial. There are many logistical changes that were proposed involving the labeling and rating of various disorders. “’And it has huge implications for stigma,’ Dr. First continued, ‘because the more disorders you put in, the more people get labels, and the higher the risk that some get inappropriate treatment’” (Carey, NYT February 10 2010). I thought that this quotation in particular resonated with The Americanization of Mental Illness article. While many may believe that by classifying and rating symptoms of mental disorder makes diagnosis clearer and more uniform across the patient spectrum, is it really the most useful tactic in evaluating a patient? In all our discussion about how brains are somewhat the same, somewhat different, how can we possibly quantify and qualify mental illness according to one standard book?