The birth of the mental health diagnosis
Written by craig
Have you ever wondered just how they come up with all the various DSM diagnoses? Let me tell you a story . . .
Imagine a peddler, 14th century England, wandering from village to village selling his various pots, pans and other wares. Then he enters a village where, on almost every fence, wall, and tree he sees a painted target with an arrow sticking smack dab in the middle of the bullseye. Well, one can only imagine that the peddler is quite impressed, so he runs up to the nearest villager and asks, “Good sir, I have never seen such incredible marksmanship. Could you direct me to the archer who performed such a feat?”
The villager pauses, mutters, “Oh that. It's just the village idiot,” and he keeps on walking.
Not to be put off, the peddler chases after him and asks again, only to be given much the same answer, but this time with an explanation.
“It's like I told you; It was the village idiot. He shoots the arrow into the tree and draws the target around it.” And that's how we come up with the diagnoses in the DSM: we look at a bunch of symptoms, lump them together, and put a name on them. In some instances, this is like lumping dollar bills and leaves together because they are both kind of green, small, flat, and dry.
The best example of a near=meaningless diagnosis is that of schizophrenia. This is kind of like a diagnosis of “fever.” It really doesn't tell you anything about the cause. Just as fevers can be triggered by hundreds of different causes, so can this diagnosis. One can duplicate enough symptoms to get this diagnosis simply through sleep deprivation. Try staying awake for about seven days straight and see if you don't find yourself a bit disorganized, paranoid, and delusional. 'More on this later.