Maggie's Farm

Stigmatizing Resistance to Authority - The medicalization of rebellion.

America’s false autism epidemic.

The DSM, like the Psychiatric section of the ICD-9, was developed to provide a common language to people who work in mental health. Actually, for four basic purposes: a common language, as a basis for research, as clinical guidelines, and for filling out insurance forms and disability forms.

In our daily work, many Psychiatrists do not take it too seriously but use it as a rough guideline. Unfortunately, the DSM has been over-medicalized, reified, such that everything in there is sometimes regarded as a real, discrete, "disease." Some are, some are not. In many cases, it doesn't matter, because we approach each patient as an individual human and not as a diagnostic code.

As one of my wise old mentors says, "I've never seen a patient of mine in the DSM."