The Unscientific Nature Of The Diagnostic And Statistical Manual For Mental Disorders
Canadian psychologist Tana Dineen reports, "Unlike medical diagnoses that convey a probable cause, appropriate treatment and likely prognosis, the disorders listed in DSM-IV are terms arrived at through peer consensus"-literally, a vote by a psychiatric association member.
(PRWEB) September 5, 2005
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, 4th Edition (DSM-IV), published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), is the psychiatrist's bible of "disorders" from which psychiatric diagnoses and their treatment are derived. The current edition lists 374 psychiatric conditions that have been identified as mental disorders.
It is not only used to diagnose mental illness and prescribe treatment, but as an authoritative source to resolve child custody battles, discrimination cases based on alleged psychiatric disability, augment court testimony, modify education, and much more. It is also an essential element of the pharmaceutical/ psychiatric alliance to invent diseases and then sell the drugs to manage these diseases and keep the public medicated.
Yet, the disorders contained in the DSM-IV are arrived at by consensus, not by scientific criteria. Canadian psychologist Tana Dineen reports, "Unlike medical diagnoses that convey a probable cause, appropriate treatment and likely prognosis, the disorders listed in DSM-IV are terms arrived at through peer consensus"-literally, a vote by a psychiatric association member.
Further refuting any medical validity to DSM-IV, in 2004, John Read, senior lecturer in psychology at Auckland University, New Zealand said, "More and more problems have been redefined as 'disorders' or 'illnesses,' supposedly caused by genetic predispositions and biochemical imbalances. Life events are relegated to mere triggers of an underlying biological time-bomb. Feeling very sad has become 'depressive disorder.' Worrying too much is 'anxiety disorder.' Excessive gambling, drinking, drug use or eating are also illnesses. Â… Making lists of behaviors, applying medical-sounding labels to people who engage in them, then using the presence of those behaviors to prove they have the illness in question is scientifically meaningless."
Brian Beaumont, President of the Vancouver Chapter of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights says “Children signs of ‘disorder’, as reported in the DSM, occur when they are deceitful, break rules, can't sit still or wait in lines, have trouble with math or writing, don’t pay attention to details, don't listen, don't like to do homework or lose their school assignments or pencils, or speak out of turn, gaze out of the window in class, fidget and on and on. These things describe any healthy, active, normal child. Psychiatrist are therefore diagnosing normal childhood behavior as a ‘mental Disorder’ and then prescribing powerful mind-altering drugs to ‘treat’ the made up disorder”.
Just as illnesses can be "voted in" and then used to justify a treatment, political pressure can be brought to bear to vote illnesses "out" - as in 1973, when APA committee members voted-5,584 to 3,810-to cease calling homosexuality a mental disorder after gay activists picketed the APA conference. Attorney Lawrence Stevens, a former assistant District Attorney in California, commented: "If mental illness were really an illness in the same sense that physical illnesses are illnesses, the idea of deleting homosexuality or anything else from the categories of illness by having a vote would be as absurd as a group of physicians voting to delete cancer or measles from the concept of disease."
To understand how this "not very good" collection of opinions assumed its false scientific aura, it is also necessary to examine the influence of the pharmaceutical industry. Research has documented that at least one third of the 182 international advisors to the DSM IV (released in 1994) have received funding by pharmaceutical companies. They also all belong to one or more international and national psychiatric groups (i. e. the World Psychiatric Association, the World Federation for Mental Health, and the Association for European Psychiatrists) that in turn receive the majority of their funding from pharmaceutical companies. Non-medical groups, such as National Mental Health Association and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) that also receive pharmaceutical funding, also provided their opinion for the construction of DSM-IV. These groups create the illusion that there is a big demand for psychotropic drugs.
Dr. Thomas Dorman, a member of the Royal College of Physicians of the United Kingdom and fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada, says, "In short, the whole business of creating psychiatric categories of 'disease,' formalizing them with consensus, and subsequently ascribing diagnostic codes to them, which in turn leads to their use for insurance billing, is nothing but an extended racket furnishing psychiatry a pseudo-scientific aura. The perpetrators are, of course, feeding at the public trough."
There are so many signs of unethical behavior and public deception that a full governmental investigation is warranted into the DSM. Currently, millions of children are being diagnose with some mental "disorder" in our schools based on the DSM, leading to their being prescribed dangerous psychiatric drugs.
Prepared by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a mental health watchdog group established by the Church of Scientology in 1969 to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights.
IF you feel you have been harmed by a psychiatrist please call the Citizens Commission on Human Rights at 1-800-670-2247.
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