Just sounds like they want more diagnostic codes for the insurance companies:
Is nonconformity and freethinking a mental illness? According to the newest edition of the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), it certainly is. The manual identifies a new mental illness called “oppositional defiant disorder” or ODD. Defined as an “ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile and defiant behavior,” symptoms include questioning authority, negativity, defiance, argumentativeness, and being easily annoyed.
The DSM-IV is the manual used by psychiatrists to diagnose mental illnesses and, with each new edition, there are scores of new mental illnesses. Are we becoming sicker? Is it getting harder to be mentally healthy? Authors of the DSM-IV say that it’s because they’re better able to identify these illnesses today. Critics charge that it’s because they have too much time on their hands.
New mental illnesses identified by the DSM-IV include arrogance, narcissism, above-average creativity, cynicism, and antisocial behavior. In the past, these were called “personality traits,” but now they’re diseases. And there are treatments available.
Well, IMO, they need to add some others to balance things out, such as:
obsequiousness, excessive obedience, conformity, religiosity, denial of science, inability to reason, inability to listen to reason, fixation on guns, pollyanna-ism, and excessive and cloying hope, to name a few.
Sounds like Soviet-era Thought Police stuff. What better way to incarcerate pesky lefties who don’t break laws; call them crazy, lock them up and throw away the keys . . . after the lobotomy and Thorazine mind wipe, of course.
While I do think there is a discussion to be had about over-medicating people, (especially pushing for pharma treatment of children in an attempt to capture the marketplace), this article is just painfully incorrect.
It loses credibility early when it talks about “the newest edition of the DSM-IV” and later mentions that the DSM-IV has been around for 50 years. It’s clear the author doesn’t understand that it is the DSM which has been around for 50 years, and each revision is numbered. The new edition which just came out is #5, and IV was only around since the 90s.
Oppositional Defiant Disorder has actually been around since 1980, in DSM-III, and so isn’t some new thing to defeat creativity at all.
In fact, the revision for DSM-5 (which came out in 2013 and so I assume is what this person is talking about) specifically points out that most of the diagnostic elements of the disorder are common parts of normal childhood development, and provides guidance on the frequency and severity you need to see to consider this diagnosis.
I honestly don’t know where they are getting the stuff about “cynicism” or “creativity” being defined as a mental disorder, unless they are misreading the whole alternative “trait-based” diagnosis model the DSM-5 presents as needing further research. (Antisocial personality disorder, however, is again something that’s been around a long time and isn’t new.)
http://www.dsm5.org/Documents/changes%20from%20dsm-iv-tr%20to%20dsm-5.pdf