A Case Against DSM-5 And Diagnosis Inflation

" Our classification of mental disorders is no more than a collection of fallible and limited constructs that seeks but never finds the truth - but this remains our best current way of communicating about, treating, and researching mental disorders. [...] It is good to know and use the DSM definitions, but not to reify or worship them." ― Allen Frances, Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt Against Out-Of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life

Hate your life? Pop a pill. Feeling helpless? Pop a pill. Feeling anxious? Pop a pill. Feeling unhappy? Pop a pill. We’re the pill popper society. Shoving pills down our throats is the new popular remedy. It only takes one enticing bad boy in the building - a.k.a the DSM - to change how we envision mental illness as a society. It’s a dangerous endeavor to start using such tool - one that doesn’t tell the full story - as a means of psychoanalyzing ourselves and those around us. Our biases work at their very best when we look to find elements to confirm our presupposed beliefs. When you look for damage, you’ll eventually find it, no matter where you look, even if it’s not there.

Cocktails of meds are being swallowed in the mouths of many, as they have been led to believe that it’s an efficient solution to alleviate their misery. While money hungry pharmaceutical companies can’t be fixed, your temporary depressed state of mind surely can. After all, when a patient comes in, you better make sure they’ll come out with a new diagnosis in hand. Doesn’t matter if it’s accurate or not, since when do we get accurate evaluations from 6 minutes appointments, anyway? Can we blame them after all? Would you turn down a big fat chunk of money, even if your integrity was on the line? Yet we keep on holding DSM, psychiatrists, and all sorts of meds highly, as we assume they know what they’re doing, and that these meds are surely working.

Well the truth is that we are right to think that. They know damn well what they are doing. A general practitioner knows damn well that he isn’t the one who should prescribe you antipsychotics, yet he does so anyway. A psychiatrist knows damn well that going through grief doesn’t equate qualifying for depression, yet he’ll prescribe you antidepressants anyway.Science may be close to perfect - but the ones who extract what they find through it surely aren’t. When personal gain enters the room, the well-being of many is being thrown down the window.