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Psychosprawl

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Dr. Edward Shorter has this commentary in the WSJ on the draft DSM-V. The most important part for our topic is near the end:

A new problem is the extension of "schizophrenia" to a larger population, with "psychosis risk syndrome." Even if you aren't floridly psychotic with hallucinations and delusions, eccentric behavior can nonetheless awaken the suspicion that you might someday become psychotic. Let's say you have "disorganized speech." This would apply to about half of my students. Pour on the Seroquel for "psychosis risk syndrome"!

DSM-V accelerates the trend of making variants on the spectrum of everyday behavior into diseases: turning grief into depression, apprehension into anxiety, and boyishness into hyperactivity.

Any collection of behaviors with a code in the DSM will be claimed as mitigation in criminal cases, if not a complete excuse for crimes. The continuing sprawl of such "diseases" is cause for concern.

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I'm feeling a spell of "intermittent explosive disorder" coming on.

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