Redefining traits as ‘mental illness’

PSYCHIATRISTS have long desired to be viewed on a par with medical professionals. Their practice, however, of redefining regular life problems and idiosyncrasies as so-called ‘mental disorders’ has resulted in psychiatrists and their profession being held up to ridicule.

Mental health ‘experts’ scrutinise, debate and pontificate over human behaviours, before voting on which of their unscientific redefinitions should be included in psychiatric textbooks as ‘mental illness.’

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has been consistently ridiculed for reclassifying normal human behaviour. When a person experiences mental difficulties and is need of help, the psychiatric rhetoric tends to be accepted without inspection.

Shyness and bereavement have been cleverly redefined and classed as mental illnesses. Shyness now has the label ‘social anxiety disorder’ while bereavement is redefined as ‘prolonged grief disorder.’

Regular medical doctors have tests to prove or disprove illness. This is not the case with psychiatrists. In a significant departure from medical diagnosis, psychiatric diagnoses are devoted to the categorisation of symptoms only rather than the observation of actual physical disease.

Psychologist John Read put it succinctly when he said, “Making lists of behaviours, applying medical-sounding labels to people who engage in them, then using the presence of those behaviours to prove they have the illness in question is scientifically meaningless. It tells us nothing about causes or solutions. It does, however, create the reassuring feeling that something medical is going on.”

This is how mental disturbance is being marketed by psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical industry, and in the process, creating a multimillion pound industry that is feeding at the public trough. BRIAN DANIELS, National

Spokesperson, Citizens Commission on Human Rights

(United Kingdom)