“social anxiety disorder” ~ Hmmmm?
Indeed. There's method in their madness:
New Book: How Shyness Became a Mental Illness
"... The number of mental disorders that children and adults in the general population might exhibit leaped from 180 in 1968 to more than 350 in 1994,” notes Lane, Northwestern's Herman and Beulah Pearce Miller Research Professor. In a book that calls in doubt the facade of objective research behind psychiatry's revolution, Lane questions the rationale for the changes, and whether all of them were necessary and suitably precise...
In examining the American Psychiatric Association archives, Lane -- who argues that psychiatry is using drugs with poor track records to treat growing numbers of normal human emotions -- even came across a proposal to establish “chronic complaint disorder,” in which people moan about the weather, taxes or the previous night's racetrack results.
“It might be funny,” he says, save for the fact that the DSM's next edition, due to be completed in 2012, is likely to establish new categories for apathy, compulsive buying, Internet addiction, binge-eating and compulsive sexual behavior. Don't look for road rage, however. It's already in the DSM, under intermittent explosive disorder."
Indeed. I read a book about the increase in mental illness diagnoses and (I’m still a little groggy from a late night) but I think it was called, “One Nation Under Prozac” or something along those lines. The proliferation of psychiatric intervention in our lives is incredible. From Woody Allen’s movies portrayals of nearly everyone in New York City going to psychoanalysts, to Ritalin requirements for scads of little boys, to Prozac prescriptions going through the roof, it is sad. (Course here I risk being diagnosed with depression, Seasonal Affective Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, whatever, to even mention emotions. (Actually I gave up emotions a long time ago. Spock is my hero. ;o) So I suspect there is another reason for me to avoid psychiatrists.)
It is true that a lot of this is follow the money: Mental health professionals ensure their jobs. Drug companies ensure profits from the drug de jour. Schools ensure peaceful classrooms. Doctors have pills to send home with their troublesome patients. Patients have magic pills to make them feel better. It is a money trail.
I don’t want to disparage the real mental illnesses which are helped by the above interested parties. Psychotropic medication has worked miracles in some cases, to the point where I wish it were still possible to coerce people into taking their anti-psychotic drugs. It’s just that anytime you create a classification of people, and give that group accommodations or privileges, it is going to be abused. All we have to do is look at what has happened to civil rights law, and to rights for handicapped individuals. Abuse leads to disrespect for the group and hurts everyone, especially those who needed the help in the first place.
I grew up in the intermountain west. If we were angst-ridden even for a moment as children or teens, there were two general prescriptions: get to work helping someone or repent. One or the other pretty much worked. I imagine that today those prescriptions would be considered some form of psychiatric abuse and the subject of yet another mental illness like weedpulling compulsive disorder or church coercion syndrome. But there is something to be said about letting go of navel-gazing and looking around to help others.