Mental Illnesses
The increasing pharmacological therapy for mental disorders ought to concern us. The DSM-IV, which defines mental illnesses, ought to be reclassified as a work of fiction in that disorders come and go based on whatever popular culture holds to be true at the moment. For instance, depression used to be a period of prolonged sadness in people who could not name its cause. In other words, if you were sad and knew why you were sad, you weren’t depressed. You were sad. Maybe you were grieving. Today, you’re clinically depressed if you’re sad for more than a brief time, and the clinically depressed get medicated. Not to mention giving powerful drugs to kids who cannot sit still for hours on end in school on a diet of a sugar. We have to stop medicating grieving widows, lonely people, rambunctious kids, and others. When everything is a mental illness, then nothing is a mental illness.