As mentioned previously, a recent article in the Archives of General Psychiatry suggesting that 1 in 5 college students have a serious personality disorder received quite a bit of coverage in the popular press.   The Last Psychiatrist has some good thoughts about this article, including this:

I'm sure I'll be disputed, but hear me out:  we're entering the age of Keynesian Psychiatry, and the NYT can't contain their ejaculate.

It's an era where "free will" and the normal checks and balances of society and superego are considered ineffective.  No one can be expected to resist the id, and we need our parents to help keep us in control, or bail us out, send us money, when we need it.

We have massive bailouts, where the solution to 30 years of prior deficit spending is-- sit down-- more deficit spending; when the solution to overconsumption and undersaving is-- even more consumption and less saving.  Similarly, 30 years of maladaptive behaviors will be treated with-- different maladaptive behaviors.

It's not profits and growth, it's "fiscal stimulus" and "infrastructure development"-- in psychiatry this means less focus on treatment, less focus on "remission," and increased spending on detection, prevention, education-- you're already sick, you just don't know it.  This dovetails nicely with the (temporary) death of Big Pharma, who won't be generating any new treatments any time soon.  And if it's not obvious why early detection and education is bad: you don't get to decide what kind of detection or what kind of education.  Psychiatry does.

So too will there be increased "services" for the "mentally ill"-- redefined as anyone at all who wants the benefits-- even if these services weaken society in the long run.  Both are Ponzi schemes built to fix prior, failing Ponzi schemes.  They'll fail,  just in time for our kids to get drafted.

Just as you see a move towards more government regulation and control, so will you see psychiatry mirror this.  Laws will be written and revised, focusing less on punishment while simultaneously emphasizing surveillance.  For example: "taking cocaine is a disease, it shouldn't be punished, it should be treated.  So let's have mandatory drug testing for everyone 14 and older, you know, for early intervention."

Psychiatry as an arm of social policy means we have accepted society's new mantra: please save me from myself.

Or to put it another way, it matters how mental health professionals define mental illness.