was so saddened by some of the content of a recent "aspie logo" discussion, which turned into a DSM-related dispute, that i decided to post afew extracts from an Economist article (found thanks to "Asylum - the magazine for a democratic psychiatry") which might serve to remind people that psychiatrists are only human / are as capable as anyone of making terrible mistakes. The article, one of several on the subject of the APA's DSM V, was posted on www.economist.com on May 18th 2013:
Quote:
Chapter and Verse: The DSM, the first version of which was published in 1952, has always attracted controversy. That version, and the second edition, published in 1968, relied on the premise that mental illness was a neurotic response to a patient?s experience and environment... Different interpretations of experience and environment also meant that cultural differences affected diagnosis... The third DSM, published in 1980, introduced a new approach?also followed in the fourth in 1994... DSM-III acknowledged that psychiatrists had a poor understanding of the physiological cause of mental illness.... The hope was that biological markers [of syndromes] would be discovered as physiological understanding increased... [yet] in most cases, the hoped-for biological markers haven't turned up?and to the extent that they have, they have muddied the waters, rather than clarifying them... The biggest muddyings have come from brain scanning and genetics... As Dan Blazer of Duke University, who served on DSM-5?s task-force, puts it, ?We?re basically drawing artificial lines, and the body and the mind do not work like that.? [DSM V] has, for example, chunked together four previously separate diagnoses, including autism and Asperger?s syndrome, into one disorder of varying severity, known as ?autism spectrum disorder?...the unfortunate truth is that it is still far too early to use biological markers as criteria for diagnosis. ?The human brain is the most impossibly complex thing in the universe,? says Allen Frances, who led the development of DSM-IV. ?It does not yield its secrets easily.? Worse, argues Dr Frances, DSM-5 has not stopped the rise in the number of allegedly...mental conditions [which] the man in the street would think normal, if not always desirable, behaviour. Children may now, for example, be diagnosed with ?disruptive mood dysregulation disorder??what used to be known as temper tantrums. [DSM-5] does not [make] addiction to internet gaming a formal disorder. But it recommends further research into the ?condition?...
Grief. Indulgence. Unhealthy habits. All, it seems, may be classified as mental derangement, and treated as such... It is this overdiagnosis and overtreatment that is the chief criticism of the DSM?or, rather, of the power it wields in the profession of psychiatry... ?The DSM is purely a product of the state of our knowledge at this point in time,? says Jeffrey Lieberman, the chairman of Columbia University?s psychiatry department and president-elect of the APA. ?The state of our knowledge is not complete.?
it's one thing to give something a name, and another to use that name to silence or otherwise hinder a person ~ i think that while Autistic people, AS people and other non-NT's have some significantly different health concerns and social needs (from each-other, as well as from NT's) we are all normal. I think society's notion of what is / isn't "acceptable development" needs to be challenged ~ i think it would be nice if psychiatrists focused on "society's"
pervasive disorders for a change. And, while they're getting their heads around that, i think a non-NT logo would be nice ...coz we clearly need something to remind us that we're meant to be fighting for a healthier social / political environment ...not more community divisions.
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gold glitter falls
like fish food
in my goldfish globe