LAYMAN IGNORANCE

http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/health-care/3586-psy...

According to an article in the New American:

http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/health-care/3586-psy...

The new fourth revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association may define several new psychiatric disorders. Some of these do not sound like varieties of mental illness at all, but rather opinions and attitudes. What would “oppositional defiant disorder,” for example, represent?

According to the new edition of the Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, this would include those who have “negativistic, defiant, disobedient and hostile behavior toward authority figures.” Other varieties of newly created mental illnesses included being antisocial, arrogant, or cynical.

Those familiar with psychiatry in the Soviet Union will cringe at this sort of neo-psychiatry. - - - - -


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The article is wildly inaccurate and based on massive ignorance of the fields of medical and psychological science.

"Opposition Defiant Disorder" is not a new diagnosis and is contained in earlier editions of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual). It is not a "psychiatric" disorder but a developmental disorder. It is a syndrome of symptoms. Socially deviant behaviour, on its own, will not qualify a person for this diagnosis. Like conditions which affect the rest of the body, it is usually diagnosed on the basis of observable symptoms and behaviour rather than on confirming biological data, such as biopsy and blood tests. At the biological level, this particular disorder is associated with abnormal patterns of neural development and some specific genetic markers.

These conditions are difficult to treat and require prolonged programs of modified education and, where appropriate, supportive medication.


According to a commentator:

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For those of you who haven't figured it out by now...
psychiatry is junk science. It always has been, always will be. The only practical use of psychology is as a weapon to destroy, not a tool to heal.

The is, however, a much better "tool" which CAN be used to heal a broken spirit --- the Bible. I'll take God over Sigmund Fraud any day of the week.
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The commentator appears to be no better informed than the author of the New Americann article. For starters, the writer confuses modern psychology and psychiatry with the the antiquated work of Sigmund Freud. This is like assuming that modern medicine still uses blood letting to cure disease.


Opposition Defiant Disorder is no less prevalent among those brought up by religious parents. The children of American-style evangelical Christians do not show any less evidence of this condition than children born to those of other religious faiths or to those with no belief in the supernatural at all.

Reading the Bible, praying and engaging in other religious rituals and practices is rarely, if ever, as effective as scientifically devised treatments and, conversely, frequently makes these conditions even worse.