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Originally Posted by BlueCrustacean
If everybody has at least one mental "disorder", then can that really be considered disorder at all? Then who's to decide what's "normal" human behavior and emotions, and "abnormal" human behavior and emotions? If everybody is weird, then nobody is weird. It's that simple.
Aside from very serious mental issues like hallucinations, schizophrenia and the like, most people's issues, and even suicidal tendencies, seem to stem from some very basic mis-education from their formative years of their own worth, what's "normal" and "not normal". EVERYBODY'S mental health could be vastly improved with basic self-esteem and gratitude learning.
The biggest problem almost all of humanity faces is growing up in societies where high self-esteem is discouraged, everybody's compared to one another, and everybody's behavior is policed and controlled. That would drive ANYONE to be insane and miserable.
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I've talked about how the DSM has gone from a thin pamphlet with a few dozen mental disorders to nearly 1,000 pages and about 350 mental disorders. How did this happen? My guess is that psychiatry has selective attention. I will explain. When a person goes to a psychiatrist (or psychologist) and says that something is causing them suffering or an inability to function in ordinary life, the psychiatrist makes an educated guess as to what it is and consults the DSM. The DSM has a checklist for each mental disorder. Usually it goes something like this: If you present 5 (or more) of the 9 symptoms listed, then you get a diagnosis of that mental disorder.
I talked about selective attention being a concern of mine, and here's what I mean: If the psychiatrist is focusing exclusively on the 9 symptoms, and ignoring all of the "normal" behavior," is the diagnosis accurate?