Abnormal Is the New Normal

[babylonsister]

Abnormal Is the New Normal
Why will half of the U.S. population have a diagnosable mental disorder?

By Robin S. Rosenberg|Posted Friday, April 12, 2013, at 8:00 AM


Illustration by Robert Neubecker.


Beware the DSM-5, the soon-to-be-released fifth edition of the “psychiatric bible,” the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. The odds will probably be greater than 50 percent, according to the new manual, that you’ll have a mental disorder in your lifetime.

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 “sicker.” The high prevalence of mental illness in the United States isn’t only because we’ve gotten better at detecting mental illness. More of us are mentally ill than in previous generations, and our mental illness is manifesting at earlier points in our lives. One study supporting this explanation took the scores on a measure of anxiety of children with psychological problems in 1957 and compared them with the scores of today’s average child. Today’s children—not specifically those identified as having psychological problems, as were the 1957 children—are more anxious than those in previous generations.

more...

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/04/diagnostic_and_statistical_manual_fifth_edition_why_will_half_the_u_s_population.single.html

[Newest Reality]

1. We could heed this adroit commentary on mental health:

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti

[freshwest]

3. I believe than more any professional text. And I know some excellent, caring professionals, too.

[Warpy]

2. You pack people into cities, overwork them, underpay them

and make damned sure they don't see much of their friends and families, you're going to see them start to get very sick from it.

We are not a healthy country by any measurement.

We need to stop this.

[Newest Reality]

4. Well, we could

simply develop Soma.

You see, a gram beats a damn. Huxley foresaw this in Brave New World.

We must be made to enjoy our servitude. Right now, beer, sports, TV, and what is called "entertainment", (which really means distraction from what is being impinged on you through exploitation) are a means to comfort the masses and avoid any messy revolts or public confilcts about the enforced policy of Oligarchs.

We have those who are willfully participating in their own subjugation in a way that allows them to be fully exploited by those who are capitalizing on their efforts, dreams and labor in order to amass wealth at the expense of those who have been trained by a system of education that presents them to these exploiters as nothing but manipulated fodder. Never are they really exposed to ideas or skills that would lead them to question the problem of how huge amounts of technology and amassed wealth do not translate into an across-the-board realization of tangible benefits realized by everyone. No way. The system of exploitation requires that people dream, imagine, hope for, pray, petition, expect, vote for, think positive about, etc., etc. It is all about an almost religious, (or is that how religion also works) paradigm where we get what we want while the rest of you live in our fabricated way of keeping you from realizing how we actually use the delayed gratification to keep you working hard for our wealth.

Notice how delayed gratification sound reasonable and good while you watch the people who want you to subscribe to that "value" get what they want and get rather antsy, nasty and pissed off when their noble, expected, deserved gratification is prevented, delayed, etc. In other words, if you are the servant, practice your deserved, delayed gratification, but god help you if you expect the one who tells you it is a virtue and that you should practice it, to give you a break if you delay theirs. Yes, that's how the whole system really works and slave and Serfs know how greed, capitalism and control are nothing more than a noose, a prison, and a slave holder's dream no matter how you want to portray it and slice it ... your odds are, you lose.

[Warpy]

5. That's another major contributing factor,

the unconstitutional "war against drugs," which has become a war on the civil liberties of American citizens, especially citizens of color.

Put psychoactive drugs in every Walgreen's and Walmart available with only a flash of a driver's license to verify age, and a lot of the mental anguish would disappear. So would a lot of the stress over pain that anybody who doesn't work a cushy desk job feels.

Note I specified "cushy."

Something has got to give eventually and when it does, it's going to be incredibly violent.

[LeftishBrit]

8. Not to mention all the stress caused by unemployment and job insecurity

[Manifestor_of_Light]

6. "Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives.

I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.”

--John Lennon

[malthaussen]

7. Fortunately, there's this little yellow pill...

Hard to believe, sometimes, that this song is almost 50 years old.

-- Mal