Mental Disorders
Beware of the “soon-to-be-released” fifth edition of the “Psychiatric Bible,” the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5).
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….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.
Another study compared “cohorts” of American adults on the personality trait of “neuroticism,” which indicates emotional “reactivity” and is associated with “anxiety.”
Americans scored higher on “neuroticism” in 1993 than they did in 1963, suggesting that as a “population” we are becoming more “anxious.”
Another study compared the level of “narcissism” among cohorts of American college students between 1982 and 2006 and found that more recent “cohorts” are more “narcissistic.”
Here’s a “third” explanation for the increased “prevalence” of mental illness, one that “implies” something important about our culture: “What was once considered psychological healthy (or at least not unhealthy) is now considered to be mental illness.”
Some of the behaviors, thoughts, and feelings that were “within” the then-normal range of human experience are now deemed to be in the “pathological” part of the continuum.
Thus, the actual “definition” of mental illness has “broadened,” creating a bigger tent with “more” people under it. This explanation “implies” that we, as a culture, are more “willing” to see mental illness in “ourselves” and in others.
The increasing number of “disorders” comes about because some “problems” that were not previously “considered” to be mental illness were “reclassified” as such by their “inclusion” in the DSM-5 and it is the DSM that “functionally” defines “mental illness” in the United States.
The White House has always attracted the mentally ill
