Allen Frances, chairman of the DSM-IV task force, writes about “the fads that litter the history of psychiatry” in the New York Post today. “We have a strong urge to find labels for disturbing behaviors,” he writes, “naming things gives us an (often false) feeling that we control them. So, time and again, an obscure diagnosis suddenly comes out of nowhere to achieve great popularity.”
Article →
***
Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.
***
Mad in America has made some changes to the commenting process. You no longer need to login or create an account on our site to comment. The only information needed is your name, email and comment text. Comments made with an account prior to this change will remain visible on the site.
Some parents are obsessed with diagnosing their children, not only with autissm but also with dyslexia etc. What these parents don’t realise is that diagnosing them gives their children a feeling of not being adequate and not good enough. Sometimes parents are too competitive and have preconceived ideas about what their children should be doing and at what age. These parents do their children more harm than good by not letting them develop at their own pace.I have witnessed that sort of thing going on among my friends.
Report comment
Our schools are also increasingly requiring labels on children before we’ll help them. Funding is attached to the labels, which I get, but then the labels become reality and the kids are stuck with them and all of the implications attached to them. The same is even more true for mental health treatment for kids. If we stopped requiring labels for funding, we’d have a better chance of developing a new paradigm.
Report comment