Posted on 04/15/2013 8:28:25 AM PDT by neverdem
Although fewer than 6 percent of American adults will have a severe mental illness in a given year, according to a 2005 study, many more—more than a quarter each year—will have some diagnosable mental disorder. That’s a lot of people. Almost 50 percent of Americans (46.4 percent to be exact) will have a diagnosable mental illness in their lifetimes, based on the previous edition, the DSM-IV. And the new manual will likely make it even "easier" to get a diagnosis.
If we think of having a diagnosable mental illness as being under a tent, the tent seems pretty big. Huge, in fact. How did it happen that half of us will develop a mental illness? Has this always been true and we just didn’t realize how sick we were—we didn’t realize we were under the tent? Or are we mentally less healthy than we were a generation ago? What about a third explanation—that we are labeling as mental illness psychological states that were previously considered normal, albeit unusual, making the tent bigger. The answer appears to be all three.
First, we’ve gotten better at detecting mental illness and doing so earlier in the course of the illness. For decades, mental health clinicians, physicians, the U.S. surgeon general’s office, and various state and local agencies have been advocating for better detection of mental illness. If we are better at spotting it, we can treat it. And if we detect it earlier, we can, hopefully, intervene to reduce the intensity and/or frequency of symptoms. For instance, people who decades ago may have had undiagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression, or substance abuse are now more likely to have their problems recognized and diagnosed. But the increased awareness and detection translates into a higher rate of mental illness.
Second, we really are getting...
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
LOL...while I was writing my post, you pinged me...yep.
We are on the same page here.
Did he surrender? I mean, it was French class after all...
I think I did act up in classes I REALLY hated, like French, Spanish and typing. I guess I just felt trapped.
I didn’t act up in math, because I was simply depressed and discouraged by having to be there, and I just could not do the work. French, Spanish and typing I could have done if I had applied myself, but not math. And there was no getting out of it, either.
I am not proud of doing that, but with some years between it, it seems hilarious to me that I would have done it. I was a very quiet kid, though that doesn’t seem to indicate it.
I heard that one of the “Mental Disorders” is if one grieves for a deceased loved one for more than a prescribed number of days.
After the deadline, you are no longer a bereaved widow, but a nutcase.
NICE, eh?
That would probably include all the pious Jews who light a candle on the the anniversary of the loved one’s death every year, and are reminded by mail to do so.
A convenient way of justifying “rounding them up.”
Half of all Americans are below average!
Homosexuality can be diagnosed but corrupt forces in the medical community deny now that it is an abnormality. So it must be OVER half then. Just over half because homosexualists’ numbers are over-estimated to begin with.
Them’s fightin words!
(I always use the one “Fifty percent of doctors graduate in the lower half of their class...” and the reaction to that one is often pretty funny...:)
Heh, he was brilliant. That brings a smile to my face every time I see it!
This crazy talk is being used to tarnish political opponents and those who might seek firearms.
Yet my own position on the matter is that if you are crazy enough (because of criminal intent) to be denied a firearm, you also are crazy enough to be locked up. If you CANNOT BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR YOUR OWN ACTIONS, then someone else must be your guardian. And crazy people can use knives, cars, planes, poison, and pillows to kill persons. Lock up the crazy people already and quit telling me how the drugs they are on can help them pass for “normal”. Passing for normal isn’t the same thing as BEING normal.
The whole dx system is flawed. It isn’t a quick or completely underhanded trick. In one way, all people should be diagnosable.for instance, terrible things could happen to any one of us. All of your belongings destroyed in a fire; you lose a precious child to illness or murder; your job in the military or as a first responder has gotten to you; you’ve been raped, attacked; your spouse has cheated on you; you’ve been forced to move to a area you don’t like, etc. Therapy could help you, and maybe your insurance could cover it.
Therapy can help also when you deal with illness, yours or a family member. People do get helped by groups with the same situation. PTSD in soldiers, breast cancer, infertility.
Parents do have to deal with more mental and behavioral differences in their kids than ever before. Both the kids and the parents sometimes need psychological assistance for these issues. There are parenting techniques to help with autism, for example. There are ways to prevent attachment disorders when you adopt children. Etc.
Sometimes spouses are speaking a different language and their marriage is coming unraveled. It can take a third party in the room sometimes to facilitate communication and help save the marriage.
There are so many ways to need or be helped by mental health practitioners that are not liberal over diagnosing. And with insurance being involved, each of the instances above will carry a diagnostic code.
Is the APA a ridiculous, liberal, politically correct piece of Doo Doo? Yes. But the conditions listed above, and others, are real and when people get help, it means they are not alone, reinventing the wheel.
Helping a first responder with PTSD or alcoholism is good. It’s good to provide help to an elderly recent widow. It is important to help people with terminal diagnoses, or who’ve miscarried four babies in a row.
Please don’t forget the good that mental health can provide.
The malevolence of the left knows no bounds. May God help us.
“I see. So you believe in an invisible higher power? Hmmm. Clearly you have mental health issues. Any firearms in the house? Yes? Well, not for long. The Men with the helmets and bullet proof white coats will stop by your place between 3 and 4 am and collect those nasty guns for your own protection. Next!”
Frankly, I’m disappointed that it took 42 posts, we’re slipping.
Ah,Abby Normal, I knew her back in the day.
Why will half of the U.S. population have a diagnosable mental disorder?>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Thats nothing. 90% of all federal politicians and civil servants have a mental disorder, which is why 50% of the US population has it. The disorder is called “utopian liberal fascism.” May God have mercy on our nation.
“You see where this is going, right?”
Yup. Lubyanka prison.
IMHO
More like Soviet Russia.
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