{"id":19975,"date":"2024-05-14T09:06:52","date_gmt":"2024-05-14T13:06:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=19975"},"modified":"2024-05-14T15:15:43","modified_gmt":"2024-05-14T19:15:43","slug":"psychiatry-is-vexxing-more-americans-than-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2024\/05\/14\/psychiatry-is-vexxing-more-americans-than-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"Psychiatry is Vexxing More Americans Than Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Psychiatrists are continually concocting new &quot;mental illnesses&quot; to stretch their power over everyone else. But psychiatry fails to recognize people suffering from \u201cMissing Bullshit Alarm\u201d as a grave malady in our times. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/FkK0UPfFA7\">https:\/\/t.co\/FkK0UPfFA7<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; James Bovard (@JimBovard) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JimBovard\/status\/1790382203739730426?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 14, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Therapists are hollowing out the American character, generation by generation. What do they\u00a0\u00a0offer in lieu of the stoicism they deride? Mind-numbing drugs &amp; mind-shattering electric shocks <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/FkK0UPfFA7\">https:\/\/t.co\/FkK0UPfFA7<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; James Bovard (@JimBovard) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JimBovard\/status\/1790415049120530754?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 14, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Counterpunch, May 14, 2024<\/h2>\n<h1 class=\"headline\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2024\/05\/14\/psychiatry-is-vexxing-more-americans-than-ever\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Psychiatry is Vexxing More Americans Than Ever\u00a0<\/a><\/h1>\n<p>by James Bovard<\/p>\n<div class=\"post_content\">\n<p>Psychiatry is ruining more lives than ever before. The New York Times recently showcased psychiatric \u201cprevalence inflation\u201d \u2013 a vast increase in reported mental illness among teenagers who are encouraged to view normal feelings as grave maladies requiring intervention.<\/p>\n<p>Oxford University psychologist Lucy Foulkes observed that school programs are \u201ccreating this message that teenagers are vulnerable, they\u2019re likely to have problems, and the solution is to outsource them to a professional.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0In an academic analysis published last year, Foulkes explained that \u201cawareness efforts\u201d spur young people \u201cto interpret and report milder forms of distress as mental health problems.\u201d Filing such complaints \u201cleads some individuals to experience a genuine increase in symptoms, because labeling distress as a mental health problem can affect an individual\u2019s self-concept and behavior in a way that is ultimately self-fulfilling.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Like a New Yorker cartoon from the 1950s, psychiatric diagnoses have become status symbols, propelled by snake oil \u201csocial emotional learning\u201d programs.\u00a0\u00a0University of Southern California clinical psychologist Darby Saxbe warns that mental illness labels have \u201cbecome an identity marker that makes people feel special and unique. That\u2019s a big problem because this modern idea that anxiety is an identity gives people a fixed mindset, telling them this is who they are and will be in the future.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Psychiatric labels can become a ball-and-chain that people drag behind them.\u00a0\u00a0The New York Times found that many young people were left worse off thanks to \u201cmental health interventions.\u201d Endless classroom presentations on mental health spur \u201cco-rumination\u201d \u2013 excessively talking about one\u2019s problems \u2013 which evokes memories of first dates from hell.<\/p>\n<p>Hungarian-American psychiatrist Thomas Szasz warned in the last century, \u201cPsychiatrists manufacture mental diagnoses the way the Vatican manufactures saints.\u201d But protests by Szasz and other dissident shrinks did nothing to prevent a sham stampede.<\/p>\n<p>The American Psychiatric Association\u2019s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) now lists more than 300 mental illnesses, five times as many as it specified in the 1960s. Dr. Allen Frances, writing in <em>Psychology Today<\/em>, warned that the latest DSM contained \u201cmany changes that seem clearly unsafe and scientifically unsound\u201d and is \u201clikely to lead to massive over-diagnosis and harmful over-medication.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0After the DSM redefined autism in the 1990s, the autism rate \u201cquickly multiplied almost 100 fold.\u201d Thanks to another DSM redefinition, the \u201cnumber of American children and adolescents treated for bipolar disorder increased 40-fold\u201d between 1993 and 2004, the\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>\u00a0reported. Psychiatrist Laurent Mottron complained in 2023 that the latest version of the DSM \u201cis full of vague and trivial definitions and ambiguous language that ensures more people fall into various, abnormal categories.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The DSM provides a road map for federal law.\u00a0\u00a0The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compels schools and universities to provide \u201creasonable accommodation\u201d to students who claim to have a disability, physical or mental. Even before the pandemic, up to 25% of students at top colleges were \u201cclassified as disabled, largely because of mental-health issues such as depression or anxiety, entitling them to a widening array of special accommodations like longer time to take exams,\u201d the Wall Street Journal reported in 2018. Similar string-pulling occurs for the rigorous entrance exams for New York City\u2019s elite high schools, where \u201cwhite students\u2026 are 10 times as likely as Asian students to have a [disability] designation that allows extra time,\u201d the\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>\u00a0reported.<\/p>\n<p>Between 2008 and 2019, the number of undergraduate students diagnosed with anxiety increased by 134%, 106% for depression, 57% for bipolar disorder, 72% for ADHD, 67% for schizophrenia, and 100% for anorexia, according to the National College Health Assessment. Students\u2019 struggles skyrocketed after COVID shutdowns. A Boston University analysis of students on almost 400 campuses in 2022 found that \u201c60% of the respondents met the qualifying criteria for \u2018one or more mental health problems, a nearly 50% increase from 2013.\u2019\u201d\u00a0\u00a0But awarding endless psychiatric Purple Hearts will do nothing to help college graduates adjust to the challenges of life beyond the classroom.<\/p>\n<p>I recognized that the DSM was becoming unhinged after attending the 1986 annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in Washington. Here are some riffs from a Detroit News piece I wrote at that time:<\/p>\n<p>The APA served attendees a batch of freshly-ordained mental illnesses, including\u00a0\u00a0\u201cpremenstrual dysphoric disorder.\u201d The APA says symptoms of this \u201cmental illness\u201d include \u201cirritability,\u201d \u201cmarked fatigue,\u201d and \u201cnegative evaluation of self.\u201d According to the APA\u2019s definition, a third of all women go crazy once a month.<\/p>\n<p>The second newly ordained mental illness is \u201cself-defeating personality type,\u201d previously known as common or garden-variety masochism. The symptoms for this grade disorder include, \u201ccomplaints, directly or indirectly, about being unappreciated,\u201d \u201crepeatedly turns down opportunities for pleasure,\u201d and \u201cremains in relationships in which others\u2026 take advantage of him or her.\u201d Bring on the Valium!<\/p>\n<p>The third \u201cdiscovery\u201d was guaranteed to raise the APA\u2019s popularity with trial lawyers. The APA tentatively decided that anyone who persistently fantasizes about or actively forces a non-consenting person to have sex suffers from \u201cparaphilic rapism.\u201d In other words, a person would have to be nuts to rape somebody. As one protester at the APA\u2019s meeting declared, \u201cSexual assault is a crime \u2013 not a mental disorder.\u201d The Committee of Women of the APA said the new category would \u201cprovide an instant insanity plea for anyone charged with rape.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The redefinition of rape epitomizes psychiatry\u2019s view of crime: no one is responsible for anything and psychiatrists should have supervision over everything. The big hero at the APA\u2019s convention was Jack Hinckley, father of John Hinckley, who announced he was launching a campaign to increase public support for psychiatry. (His son was seeing a psychiatrist before he shot President Reagan, but APA members would rather not talk about that.) The psychiatrist introducing Hinckley, Sr., spoke movingly about the \u201ctragedy that struck the Hinckley family\u201d \u2013 with no thought of a nation that was almost robbed of its elected leader.<\/p>\n<p>The APA\u2019s new mental illnesses will provide shrinks with lucrative new court \u201cexpert witness\u201d opportunities. One woman already successfully used premenstrual syndrome as an \u201cinsanity\u201d defense for murdering her husband, and PMS is now being used as a defense in child abuse cases. This is progress?<\/p>\n<p>If shrinks only cleaned out people\u2019s wallets, then they would be no more harmful than your average politician. But psychiatrists nowadays routinely rely on mind-numbering drugs and mind-shattering electric shock treatments. Some mental patients are developing Parkinson\u2019s disease symptoms as a result of years of heavy medication. Electric shock \u201ctherapy\u201d \u2013 aside from being a terrifying experience \u2013 sometimes causes permanent memory loss, thus making it harder for a patient to handle reality.<\/p>\n<p>We have new mental illnesses not because of new breakthroughs in understanding the mind, but because psychiatrists want more money and more power over the rest of us. Shrinks generally have a poor batting average for curing known mental problems \u2013 but that has not stopped them from creating new \u201cillnesses\u201d that supposedly they alone can treat.\u00a0\u00a0But a con artist with an M.D. is still a con artist.<\/p>\n<p>***<\/p>\n<p><strong>My carping did nothing to slow the hucksters<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0In 2019, the American Psychological Association officially designated traditional masculinity as a de facto mental illness.\u00a0\u00a0Their new guidelines specifically state that \u201cstoicism\u201d and other traits are \u201con the whole, harmful.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Did that make Marcus Aurelius spin in his grave?\u00a0\u00a0Apparently, instead of toughing out challenges, people are supposed to spend their lives whimpering to shrinks and getting appropriately drugged.\u00a0\u00a0But the Food and Drug Administration is a shill for Big Pharma and is unlikely to expose or admit the long-term harm from drugs that can partially numb minds.<\/p>\n<p>Psychiatrists have helped some individuals better understand themselves and deal more deftly with everyday reality.\u00a0\u00a0But bogus mental illnesses have turned millions of healthy Americans into \u201cmental patients,\u201d according to Dr. Allen Frances.\u00a0\u00a0That debacle explains why Thomas Szasz crusaded against the \u201ctherapeutic state\u201d and<u>\u00a0<\/u>the \u201cmedicalization of everyday life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But this peril also profoundly endangers freedom.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The profusion of new diagnostic labels encourages people to view themselves as psychologically fragile. Actually, the Americans with Disabilities Act tacitly rewards people who demand \u201creasonable accommodations\u201d because they are depressed or anxious.\u00a0\u00a0Those incentives create a downward politico-psychological spiral.\u00a0\u00a0Besides, if you\u2019re rea<strong>ding this website, you\u2019re at risk of being designated \u2013 i.e., found guilty \u2013 of DSM category 313.81, Oppositional Defiant Disorder. One tell-tale trait of that mental illness: \u201cOften argues with authority figures.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Would my sarcastic tweets suffice to convict me on that charge?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Therapists are hollowing out the American character, generation by generation<\/strong>. What do they\u00a0\u00a0offer in lieu of the stoicism they deride?<strong> Unfortunately, there is no DSM category for people suffering from a \u201cMissing Bullshit Alarm.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Maximizing the number of people labeled as psychologically fragile or damaged becomes an entitlement program for demagogues riding to the rescue.\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0A century ago, H.L. Mencken observed,\u00a0\u00a0\u201cThe whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and hence, clamorous to be led to safety\u2014by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0And<strong> the more panicky people become, the more gullible they will be.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>***<\/p>\n<p><em>An earlier version of this piece was published by the Libertarian Institute.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"author_description\"><strong><em>James Bovard<\/em><\/strong><em> is the author of <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/140397666X\/counterpunchmaga\"><em>Attention Deficit Democracy<\/em><\/a><em>, <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/1403968519\/counterpunchmaga\"><em>The Bush Betrayal<\/em><\/a><em>, and <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/1403963681\/counterpunchmaga\"><em>Terrorism and Tyranny<\/em><\/a>.<em> His latest book is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Last-Rights-Death-American-Liberty-ebook\/dp\/B0CP9WF634\/\">Last Rights: the Death of American Liberty<\/a>. Bovard is on the USA Today Board of Contributors. He is on Twitter at @jimbovard. His website is at <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com\"><em>www.jimbovard.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Psychiatrists are continually concocting new &quot;mental illnesses&quot; to stretch their power over everyone else. But psychiatry fails to recognize people suffering from \u201cMissing Bullshit Alarm\u201d as a grave malady in our times. https:\/\/t.co\/FkK0UPfFA7 &mdash; James Bovard (@JimBovard) May 14, 2024 Therapists are hollowing out the American character, generation by generation. What do they\u00a0\u00a0offer in lieu [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11005,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4174,4171,4172,645,4163,2349,219,4173,202,45,4169,4165,218,114],"class_list":["post-19975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ada","tag-allen-frances","tag-american-psychiatry-association","tag-americans-with-disabilities-act","tag-bipolar","tag-covid","tag-dsm","tag-electric-shock-therapy","tag-fraud","tag-freedom","tag-hinckley","tag-lucy-foulkes","tag-psychiatry","tag-szasz"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Psychiatry is Vexxing More Americans Than Ever - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Psychiatry is vexxing more lives with a deluge of bogus diagnoses that justify experts intervening &amp; sowing havoc\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2024\/05\/14\/psychiatry-is-vexxing-more-americans-than-ever\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Psychiatry is Vexxing More Americans Than Ever - 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