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An Insider's Revolt Against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life
William Morrow
May 2013
On Sale: May 14, 2013
336 pages ISBN: 0062229257 EAN: 9780062229250 Kindle: B009NFMITE Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
From "the most powerful psychiatrist in America" (New
York Times) and "the man who wrote the book on mental
illness" (Wired), a deeply fascinating and urgently
important critique of the widespread medicalization of
normality Anyone living a full, rich life experiences
ups and downs, stresses, disappointments, sorrows, and
setbacks. These challenges are a normal part of being human,
and they should not be treated as psychiatric disease.
However, today millions of people who are really no more
than "worried well" are being diagnosed as having a mental
disorder and are receiving unnecessary treatment. In
Saving Normal, Allen Frances, one of the world's
most influential psychiatrists, warns that mislabeling
everyday problems as mental illness has shocking
implications for individuals and society: stigmatizing a
healthy person as mentally ill leads to unnecessary, harmful
medications, the narrowing of horizons, misallocation of
medical resources, and draining of the budgets of families
and the nation. We also shift responsibility for our mental
well-being away from our own naturally resilient and
self-healing brains, which have kept us sane for hundreds of
thousands of years, and into the hands of "Big Pharma," who
are reaping multi-billion-dollar profits. Frances
cautions that the new edition of the "bible of psychiatry,"
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders-5 (DSM-5), will turn our current diagnostic
inflation into hyperinflation by converting millions of
"normal" people into "mental patients." Alarmingly, in
DSM-5, normal grief will become "Major Depressive
Disorder"; the forgetting seen in old age is "Mild
Neurocognitive Disorder"; temper tantrums are "Disruptive
Mood Dysregulation Disorder"; worrying about a medical
illness is "Somatic Symptom Disorder"; gluttony is "Binge
Eating Disorder"; and most of us will qualify for adult
"Attention Deficit Disorder." What's more, all of these
newly invented conditions will worsen the cruel paradox of
the mental health industry: those who desperately need
psychiatric help are left shamefully neglected, while the
"worried well" are given the bulk of the treatment, often at
their own detriment. Masterfully charting the history
of psychiatric fads throughout history, Frances argues that
whenever we arbitrarily label another aspect of the human
condition a "disease," we further chip away at our human
adaptability and diversity, dulling the full palette of what
is normal and losing something fundamental of ourselves in
the process. Saving Normal is a call to all of us
to reclaim the full measure of our humanity.
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