This article has been published in numerous places and generally very kindly received. It was rejected by just one publisher, EzineArticles.com, on the grounds of it being "too negative" about psychiatry. I could of course propitiate psychiatry by not saying too many negative things about its teachings and practises -but that would mean lying. Needlss to say I was not wlling to amend the article and affect a compromise.

I have mentioned in previous articles psychiatry's Diagnostic Manual and its inherent problems as a diagnostic and billing tool.

Its full title is: "The American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)."

This is a very impressive and scientific title for what has been referred to as psychiatry's "billing bible" of mental disorders.

If a psychiatrist labels someone with one or more of the disorders listed in the manual, the label will stick and provide all the evidence needed for psychiatry to begin treatment for the "disorder" and bill the person's insurance company, government or whoever foots the bill.

It is natural enough for the layman to assume a "disorder" exists because it is described in a medical-sounding book. It is natural enough for him to assume too that scientific research and careful tests lie behind its entry into such an impressive manual. Thus, when a patient undergoes many years of medication, or surgery to his brain it is assumed that the government or the insurance company is paying for something vitally needed to correct a real condition.

However, close inspection of the DSM, its content and how that content is arrived at throws its bona fides into serious doubt and insurance companies and heath officials are now beginning to heed human rights groups such as the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) who have worked for many years to raise the alarm over what they contend is a fraudulent manual without scientific merit.

You can of course make up your own mind about the DSM. Have a look at it when you have a moment. It makes a fascinating read.

The first thing you will notice is that almost every nuance of human behavior is included in its list of "disorders" requiring treatment. Virtually any frame of mind is, according to the manual, a mental illness, (and you can see this for yourself if you read the manual) which means almost all of us, per the manual, are mentally ill. Therefore almost all of us are candidates for a psychiatric label and expensive drugging or brain surgery, for which our medical insurance or government will foot the bill.

This incidentally apparently lies behind psychiatric claims for more funding due to "mental illness being on the rise." What is actually on the rise is the number of aspects of human existence RE-CATEGORIZED as "mental illness." Man in other words - his defamers to the contrary - is not going mad: he is simply being TOLD he is. And one sure-fire way of driving someone a bit loopy is to keep telling him he is mentally ill!
For example, shyness - a common life situation - is now categorized as "Social Anxiety Disorder" (SAD). The shy person, already suffering from shaky self-confidence will no doubt be bolstered to discover that not only is he bashful but he has a diseased brain to boot.

The psychiatric drugging industry is already a money-spinning monster but no matter how huge it grows, the compilers of the DSM are hard at work inventing new disorders to add to their manual and thus make the net even larger.

Factually, the way a "Disorder" gets listed in the DSM is by majority vote at a psychiatric conference. A disorder becomes a disorder quite literally by a show of hands. Everybody assumes it gets there by way of elaborate testing, clinical trials and the compiling of results and so forth. No it doesn't. What happens is that someone proposes, say, shyness and the others vote on it. if a majority vote is achieved, shyness becomes a mental illness listed in the manual.

The DSM has taken countless aspects of human behavior and reclassified them as a mental illness simply by adding the term "disorder" onto them. That is the sum total of science that goes into the manual! This may sound too outrageous to be believed, especially as human lives and happiness are at stake, but I invite you to research this for yourself and verify whether what I have said here about the DSM is true.
Even key contributors to the DSM admit that there is no scientific or medical validity to the disorders, yet the DSM nevertheless serves as a diagnostic tool, not only for individual treatment, but in child custody disputes, court testimony, and so forth.

Imagine if you went to your doctor suffering from an itchy nose and the doctor took one look at you and made up a diagnosis off the top of his head: "Proboscis Disorder. Very serious. Here, take this drug. Don't be alarmed by the side effects. That will be $500 please!"

Not very scientific is it? Well that is about the same order of science employed by psychiatry, except their "Proboscis Disorder" appears in an impressive-looking book.

Hard to grasp? Let me repeat how it works: observe some aspect of human behavior; call it a "disorder" quite arbitrarily and off the top of your head, no tests or experimentation involved; put it in a book; label some people as suffering from the disorder; start administering drugs, electro-shock or whatever; hope no-one notices the absence of science; bill their insurance companies or government; and....well, that's it!

Here by way of illustration is a fictitious example: Joe is lethargic due to bad diet. Observe sluggishness in Joe and similar behaviour in a few other people, although reasons for lethargy might vary (bad diet, hangover, virus etc). Don't investigate to discover why Joe and others are lethargic or even whether each lethargy case springs from the same cause. Merely invent a name for the symptoms that does not explain or establish understanding: "Sloth Disorder." Enter "Sloth Disorder" in DSM with a description of symptoms, ("sloth...etc.") Diagnose a few people as having Sloth Disorder. Write out prescription for drugs. Bill insurance company. Due to drugs person becomes agitated. Invent "Agitation Disorder". Diagnose. Drug. Bill.

"A nice little earner." as we say in England.

At least, our criminals do.

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My main blog is McFadden Avenue