The American Psychiatric Association has been under increasing scrutiny regarding the upcoming revision of the DSM manual of psychiatric disorder codes and labels. The numbered diagnoses listed are often and most used by insurance companies and doctors for billing purposes. With the revisions being discussed the new DSM 5 has potential for watering down and over generalizing many psychiatric diagnosis as well as medicalizing some human conditions as a result.
America has a problem. Society is in general a quick-fix nation. Americans want easy answers and they don't want to take the time to introspect or heal when they suffer grief, loss and change that happens as a part of being a human being. The medicalization of human emotions and reactions to life events has increased with people seeking treatment from doctors and psychiatrists, they want relief and many find it inside a pill bottle. Though once on the psychiatric medications, unexpected body side effects can result in the patient leaving medications behind, only to find themselves weathering the storm of life itself.
Severe mental illness, I feel has not actually been seen by the general public. The few (of us, myself included as a visitor of my daughter)who have for some reason or other been inside locked psychiatric institutions and hospitals have witnessed the 'real deal' and we have also witnessed the erroneous medicating of some patients. In my years (over a decade) of being inside several locked facilities, I have seen a large spectrum of patients with various diagnosis and I dare say not many were severe.
I feel bipolar disorder is way over-diagnosed, and the ones who are severely manic or depressed are almost being done a disservice by having so many 'bipolar lite' on board using the same drugs and medical model for treatment. It goes both ways. The ones labeled bipolar are many times being medicated with popular antipsychotics many are not actually severe enough in presentation to warrent such potent chemicals.
People talk about the risk versus benefit ratio, and frankly there really is not this discussion in the trenches of locked inpatient wards and units. There is a cookie cutter formula America bases its treatment on for mental illness, and it is the same drugs across the board for many different DSM diagnostic codes and labels. I've seen doctors prescribe Seroquel (antipsychotic) for just about everything. From Borderline to Bipolar, from Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective, to agitated depression.
It seems there is an answer for all of the DSM 5 diagnoses and the same run of the mill pills are the answer. It's rare to find a locked inpatient unit that houses therapists or psychotherapists. It's basically a small craft class, a few outside fresh air breaks a day and most of all it's meds time.
Patients DO NOT for the most part ever discharge OFF of medications from psychiatric hospitals in America. If you enter one off meds sure as hell you will leave on them, and if you entered on meds they will be tweaked, some added you may not need and a laundry list of DX's results in labels, added, and added and added. I've seen it with my own eyes. I 've seen the forced injections. It's all about control of the patient and many patients complain to me they cannot think on the meds. I have seen a few extremely manic, (not many!)patients arrive 'on the ceiling' and within 24 hours walking like zombies, which always broke my heart. Their spirits became dull immediately, and many grow agitated as time passed wanting to 'just go home'.
SALON has an article on therapists revolting against the new DSM 5 which discusses the over diagnosing and potential for over medicating due to the new revision of the psychiatric manual.
There is definitely an uprising happening, and I feel it's what the retired psychiatrist and blog author of 1 Boring Old Man says in his post about the therapists and psychologists speaking out against the revisions. He ponders about how psychiatrists feel, being they are in the profession of 15 minute med checks and 3 day inpatient medication management hospital stays.
True, that is what psychiatry is based on, and in my opinion this entire paradigm and drug-based medical model for psychiatric care is in need of a change and it is not changes within a diagnostic manual that creates more patients and more medicated ones to boot. The pharmaceutical companies will be the profiteers when the labels are watered down. The patients will, in the end suffer the most when dealing with a life event medicated and numbed down, only to go off of the meds and wonder where the hell their lives went.
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