The Ship of Fools
Christopher Lane had already published a book on misanthropes in the Victorian era, which he says “had a relatively high tolerance for eccentrics, reclusives, hermits, and scolds.” He wanted to carry his study into the 21st century. But when he began asking psychiatrists about the fate of contemporary misanthropes, the response he got was that they’d likely be medicated.
Behavior considered part of the normal spectrum in the 19th century, Lane says, had in our time become a mental disorder requiring treatment with prescription drugs.
And misanthropy wasn’t the only behavior that had become an illness. It looked to Lane like the much more common trait of shyness, which Victorians had actually valued as a sign of modesty and a contemplative mind, had been transformed into something called social anxiety disorder. People who dreaded giving speeches, or blushed when they were the center of attention, or who, like Lane himself, needed a certain amount of their own company, were popping pills that promised to turn them into breezy extroverts. (…)
The resulting book, Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness, was published in October 2007 by Yale University Press. (…)
There wasn’t any question about when things changed. In 1980, the American Psychiatric Association published the third edition of its bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. (…)
DSM III introduced an astounding 112 new disorders, including social phobia—defined as “a persistent, irrational fear of, and compelling desire to avoid, a situation in which the individual is exposed to possible scrutiny by others and fears that he or she may act in a way that will be humiliating or embarrassing.” Over the years, social phobia has become better known as social anxiety disorder.
The environment for these dramatic changes included two huge behind-the-scenes forces: insurance companies, which were balking at the cost of long-term talk therapy, and drug companies, which had been selling antipsychotics and tranquilizers since the 1950s and (…) were looking to reach a broader market. (…)
Public discussions about DSM V, which is expected by 2012, are now under way. The list of possible new ailments includes excessive shopping, overuse of the Internet, and apathy, and Lane predicts that if the book authenticates these “disorders,” the antishopping, antisurfing, and ennui-correction pills will soon follow.
{ Chicago Reader | Continue reading }
A world-renowned Harvard child psychiatrist whose work has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic medicines in children earned at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007 but for years did not report much of this income to university officials.
related { Michel Foucalt, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason }
