If you want breakfast in bed, sleep in the kitchen
Where does psychological health end and mental illness begin? (…)
We are in the midst of a mental illness epidemic. Office visits by children and adolescents treated for the condition jumped forty-fold from 1994 to 2003. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, nearly half of all Americans have suffered from mental illness—depression, anxiety, even psychosis—at some time in their lives. Is one out of every two Americans mentally ill, or could it be that the system of psychiatric diagnosis too often mistakes the emotional problems of everyday life for psychopathology?
This system is codified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the official handbook of the American Psychiatric Association. Now in its fourth edition, the psychiatric bible, as it is sometimes called, spells out the criteria for over 360 different diagnoses. The DSM serves as the basic text for training practitioners, for insurance companies who rely on it to determine coverage, for social service agencies who use it to assess disabilities, and for the courts, which turn to it to resolve questions of criminal culpability, competence to stand trial, and insanity.
Despite the vast influence of DSM and the best efforts of its architects, the manual has failed to clear up the murky border between health and sickness.
