A Behavioral Approach to Mental Disorders

More Cracks in the Sandcastle

May 14, 2012

Christopher Lane has a post up on Psychology Today (May 14 2012) called:  DSM-5 Is Diagnosed, With a Stinging Rebuke to the APA. About a year ago, the APA announced the new “diagnoses” that they proposed to include in the upcoming DSM-5.  This kind of expansion is nothing new.  The APA has been engaged in [...]

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Number of US Newborns with Drug Withdrawal Triples

May 14, 2012

Yahoo News recently ran an Associated Press article with the above heading.  Here are some quotes: Disturbing new research says the number of U.S. babies born with signs of opiate drug withdrawal has tripled in a decade because of a surge in pregnant women’s use of legal and illegal narcotics, including Vicodin, OxyContin and heroin, [...]

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Too Much Sex?

May 14, 2012

Christopher Lane recently published an interesting article on Psychology Today. The article covers a number of topics, including the APA’s proposal to include “hypersexual disorder” in the upcoming DSM-5.  The implications of this proposed “diagnosis” are that if you think about sex too much or engage in sexual activity too much, then you have a [...]

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Parenting and Psychiatry

April 24, 2012

About a week ago an article appeared on the ‘net concerning an attempt by parents to ban ice cream vendors from a playground in Brooklyn, New York.  The piece was reprinted in the New York Post.  Apparently some of the parents are upset because the arrival of the vendors stimulates requests for ice cream from [...]

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Cracks in the Sandcastle

April 3, 2012

The central theme of this blog is that the APA’s so-called diagnostic system is spurious and destructive.  It is destructive of the individuals that get caught in its net and destructive socially in that it undermines those values of resourcefulness and efficacy which are essential ingredients of a successful society. Psychiatrists have become tawdry drug [...]

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Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Is Not An Illness

April 2, 2012

Recently I was listening to NPR on the car radio.  The program was about so-called obsessive compulsive disorder, and a woman was describing her difficulty in this area.  I didn’t record her actual words, but it went something like this: I have all these checks and rituals that I have to do each day.  And [...]

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Eccentricity

March 21, 2012

Yesterday I received the following email from a reader. “What’s your stance on eccentricity? How do you relate to the general view in the APA that deviation from cultural norms is pathological? And, have you ever read about David Weeks? I consider myself an eccentric person with many quirks and some fetishes. While I have [...]

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Intrusive Thoughts

March 13, 2012

I recently received the following email from a reader: “I was wondering what your thoughts were on intrusive thoughts and anxiety problems or what some people call pure ocd. I have had problems for as long as I can remember.  There is so much information out there it gets confusing. I don’t believe these are [...]

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“Normal” Bereavement

March 13, 2012

There was a nice article in the Lancet last month.  The article posed the question: “When should grief be classified as a mental illness?” The author criticized the APA’s draft version of DSM-5 for blurring the distinction and for making it more likely that people in bereavement will be “diagnosed” as depressed and, of course, [...]

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Major Tranquilizers and Seniors

March 5, 2012

In 1997 I worked part-time for a nursing home.  This facility had an open-door policy and had a reputation in the state for being able to accommodate even the most difficult and unmanageable clients. Some of this reputation was attributable to their generous administration of major tranquilizers, but in addition there was a high level [...]

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