What are you reading right now?

[Roy Hunter]

No, this is nothing to do with a recognised mental disorder. These people are ing pazzo!

[Rev. Rowan Redbeard]

Someone very close to me is a grad student in mental health. According to her, the major purpose of the DSM (in the USA at least) is to be able to have a diagnosis that the insurance company will accept.

Since someone who has lost a loved one could most likely use some counseling, and general grief isn't covered, having multiple issues, of which grief of 2 weeks or more is but one of many, means that more people who could benefit from professional help can get it.

If you have to pay for help if you don't have a diagnosis, and you don't have money to pay for help, these changes will make it easier to get a diagnosis and therefore easier to get help for those who need it but can't afford it.

[Roy Hunter]

Someone very close to me is a grad student in mental health. According to her, the major purpose of the DSM (in the USA at least) is to be able to have a diagnosis that the insurance company will accept.

Since someone who has lost a loved one could most likely use some counseling, and general grief isn't covered, having multiple issues, of which grief of 2 weeks or more is but one of many, means that more people who could benefit from professional help can get it.

If you have to pay for help if you don't have a diagnosis, and you don't have money to pay for help, these changes will make it easier to get a diagnosis and therefore easier to get help for those who need it but can't afford it.

The DSM is an American publication (from the American Psychiatric Association), and it has become a tool to validate insurance claims, but it was not always so. That's why so many people use the ICD-10 instead these days.

In the UK at any rate, you don't need to hit diagnostic criteria to qualify for some talking therapies: they are available to more or less anyone who feels they need them. But there is a caveat: a few years ago (mid '90s? At work, can't be arsed looking it up) we tried offering all trauma victims counselling on demand, regardless of whether they thought they needed it, or whether they were symptomatic. Big mistake - it forced a lot of people who would otherwise have bounced back from their traumatic experience to confront it and talk about it, and we ended up with more people with symptoms of trauma and receiving treatment for it.

Access to counselling is not always a good thing...

[TheDream]

Wow all of that seems a bit complicated to me - that is why I read simple novels (I hope that is what the thread is for still...?) I am currently reading Nicci Gerrard's "Winter House". It has something to do with mental disorders but I am not motivated enough to read all encyclopedias on that subject and cannot participate in this discussion but it is worth reading anyway...

[Rainswept]

Someone very close to me

Rev, you can't say things like that just cause they are next to you on the Subway. Trust me man, I've been there.

[Roy Hunter]

Someone very close to me

Rev, you can't say things like that just cause they are next to you on the Subway. Trust me man, I've been there.

Yeah, does the person know that you're really close to them? Can they hear you breathing?

[black bart]

I am enjoying 'Neverwhere' and 'Stardust' was on last night.

There really is a 'London beneath' you know...and I know how to find it. I could take you to Henry VIII's wine cellar (one of the few surviving parts of Whitehall Palace), a lost 17C library and lost corridors/shelters with WW2 bunks...not to mention charred timbers from the Great Fire and spooky crypts.

[ET, the Extra Terrestrial]

There really is a 'London beneath' you know...and I know how to find it. I could take you to Henry VIII's wine cellar (one of the few surviving parts of Whitehall Palace), a lost 17C library and lost corridors/shelters with WW2 bunks...not to mention charred timbers from the Great Fire and spooky crypts.

Be thar buried traysure?

[Griffin]

<QUOTE Griffin> Biopsychosocial Medicine ~ Peter White

Which is a conspiracy to condemn everyone with unexplained illnesses as mentally ill. Engels has a lot to answer for.<eNDquOte>
You should look at the revisions planned for DSM V: they plan on making ordinary grief a mental disorder, and they are introducing a category for 'behavioural addictions' like gambling and using Facebook (addictions to my mind need to have a physiological aspect, like alcohol or opiates). They are also lowering the threshold for the incidence of illnesses like depression.

It looks like we will have a whole load more medicalisation of normal human ups and downs.

Yes, they've gone totally nuts. Another thing they have introduced is Somatic Syndrome Disorder - see here - so anyone with a serious biomedical illness may be diagnosed with SSD - get cancer and you are likely to be mentally ill etc. It's horrendous. There was a consultation period (I contributed) but they ignored what people said. If you saw any of the trials they did on their new diagnostics, the results were dreadful and amazing that they are going ahead regardless. It went to the printers last week. The rumour is that the APA is short of money so they are getting DSM-V out as quickly as possible.

So what you're saying is that, in your estimation, introducing new and unnecessary categories of mental disorders is a diagnosable mental disorder?

Yes. As that''s not in DSM-V one can only assume it will appear in DSM -V-R.

It's interesting to read the US version of what this is all about. From stuff I've read in the UK these mental illness categories are created to prevent insurance companies having to pay out on Permanent Health Policies - if it's physical they pay out, if it's mental they don't. Hence more and more things being defined as mental. It's also said that A lot of the "doctors" here seem to be employees, or directors of, the insurance companies. I've no idea if this is true.

Just wait til there's a category for Using Internet Forums

[black bart]

There really is a 'London beneath' you know...and I know how to find it. I could take you to Henry VIII's wine cellar (one of the few surviving parts of Whitehall Palace), a lost 17C library and lost corridors/shelters with WW2 bunks...not to mention charred timbers from the Great Fire and spooky crypts.

Be thar buried traysure?

I think there might be...in a sense...if you walk along the Thames at low tide there's no telling what you might find...if you don't get murdered. Seriously though it's quite easy to find old clay pipes.

[Nef Yoo BlackBeard]

I weed in a booke abowt a bwery notty gurl dat sneeky inna howse dat not hers !
An she break sum furnychure !
An din she et alla grewel !
An din she messy up alla beds !

rrrrr I fink goldylox be a piwit!

[black bart]

[DavidH]

"August 1914" by Barbara Tuchman. A detailed, hour-by-hour account of the outbreak of World War 1.

[black bart]

I fancy reading about Stalingrad.

[pieces o'nine]

"August 1914" by Barbara Tuchman. A detailed, hour-by-hour account of the outbreak of World War 1.

Is that not the defining feature of all Barbara Tuchman tomes?