Dan Ariely has a research study “How we view people with medical labels?”

Think for example about a parent who is told that their kid has ADHD – would this parent blame themselves less than if they were told that their kid is an active difficult kid? I think the answer is yes, and maybe this is one of the reasons that we as a society seem to be obsessed with diagnostic labels (other reasons include incentives for psychologists, medical companies etc).

(Image above from the Los Angeles Times article “Child bipolar diagnosis is a poor fit for many.”

Reason has a post titled “California NAACP Backs Marijuana Legalization, Citing Racial Disparities.” Here is an excerpt:

California NAACP endorsed a marijuana legalization initiative that will appear on the state’s ballot in November, citing dramatic racial disparities in marijuana arrests. A report issued by the Drug Policy Alliance to coincide with the NAACP endorsement finds that blacks in California’s 25 largest counties are two to four times as likely as whites to be arrested for marijuana possession, even though survey data indicate they are no more likely to use the drug. The findings of the DPA study (PDF), which was led by Queens College sociologist Harry Levine, are similar to those of a 2008 study that Levine did for the New York Civil Liberties Union.

(Find the image above in this Proud Smoke post.)

Judith Warner has an article at NYT Magazine titled “Dysregulation Nation.” Here is an excerpt:

In the late 1970s, the historian Christopher Lasch famously described America as a culture of narcissism. Today we might well be called a nation of dysregulation. The signs that something is amiss in our inner mechanisms of control and restraint are everywhere. Eating disorders, “in general a disorder of self-regulation,” according to Darlene M. Atkins, director of the Eating Disorders Clinic at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, grew epidemic in the past few decades, and in recent years have spread to minority communities, younger girls, older women and boys and men too. Obesity is viewed in many cases by mental-health experts as another form of self-dysregulation:a “pathologically intense drive for food consumption” akin to drug addiction, in the words of Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and Charles P. O’Brien, a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, who have argued for including some forms of obesity as a mental disorder in the coming version of the psychiatric bible, the DSM-V.

Recent stories of infidelity by Tiger Woods, John Edwards, and Jesse James, put a spotlight once again on bad male behavior. The act of infidelity is also not new to our time and place, nor mutually exclusive to men, although we are and have certainly been the greatest offenders to date. However, it does seem difficult to gauge how many men and women are unfaithful in their marriages and partnerships. Read more…

As the diagnostic process defining mental disorders evolves so does the complexity embedded in competing theories of the mind and what it means to be human. How the mind works and what soul entails remain in large part a mystery to us. We can’t escape what we don’t know as we struggle to find out who in fact has a psychiatric diagnosis and why. Add to the challenge of discovering why we suffer and when we cross a diagnostic threshold into pathology the fact that we live in a market economy where treatment is linked to dollars. So we have competing agendas, forces, egos, legitimate and perceived fears and anxiety, the literal and financial survival of individuals and industries at play here. Read more…

The NYT’s Consults section has a post titled “Is Sexual Anorexia the Flip Side of Sex Addiction?” that interviews Dr. Drew Pinsky, asking the question “Is Too Little Sex as Much of a Problem as Too Much Sex?.” Here is an excerpt from Dr. Pinsky’s response:

Categorically, professionals do take this problem very seriously. It is often referred to as sexual anorexia, and it is treated with the same rigor as sexual addiction.

Many times patients with sexual addictions and compulsions will have a “bipolar,” so to speak, swing to their sexual desire, in which they may move between periods of intense sexual activity followed by periods of sexual anorexia. Treatment usually is a slower process and does not require the sort of immediate interventions like an inpatient rehab that would be directed toward behaviors that can become threatening to livelihood, legal status and even one’s very life.

Read more…

We have been asking in a number of posts whether a clear distinction is being made about who in fact does and doesn’t have a psychiatric disorder. The concern being that we are casting too broad a net over the culture, diagnosing as many people as is possible with some form of mental illness. In fact, it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish the changing clinical diagnostic categories for psychiatric disorders from the marketing strategies that drive the mental health field and psychopharmacology industry to increase their customers. This mass expansion of diagnosing mental health issues and prescribing medications is unfortunate because it compromises the important research and treatment going on for people who are most in need of help. Read more…

There is legitimate cause to be suspicious or dismissive of someone who is given the diagnosis of sexual addiction. We have commented in previous posts about issues surrounding sexually related pathologies and the idea of having an actual addiction to sex. The effort to make a clear distinction between “normal” to unusual or excessive sexual behaviors and what is a real sexual psychiatric disorder is challenging for the layperson to understand. We know that great harm can be caused through infidelity, sexual manipulation and deceit. Our bodies, hearts, and minds are involved and on the line when it comes to sex. So identifying a line that exists between accountability for our behaviors and what we try to get away with and a person who is in fact not able to control himself, ultimately crossing a diagnostic threshold, is a complex process. Read more…

I comment on the field of mental health and the psychiatric diagnostic model from a systems management/analysis perspective. Katy comes at it from an in the trenches approach as a licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT) and investigator (PI) and as a social worker who witnesses how mental health services are delivered, taking a toll on individuals and families. I have contended for some time that only psychiatrists are qualified to give psychiatric diagnoses because of the level of their clinical training combined with a medical background. Over time as more mental health professionals like licensed clinical psychologists and marriage and family therapists, as well as primary care physicians, have become drivers in providing a psychiatric diagnosis the diagnostic process itself has been severely compromised. Read more…

Psychology Today‘s blog Asperger’s Diary by Lynne Soraya has a post titled “Asperger’s, Autism and Ambivalence: On Losing My Label” about the American Psychiatric Association’s decision to put Asperger’s syndrome in the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) category in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V). Labels do matter to people who have been struggling for recognition and a way to understand themselves and be understood by others. We want to know how people diagnosed with Asperger’s think and feel about the proposed changes and will continue to seek out their perspectives and post them here when we find them. Here is an excerpt from Lynne Soraya’s post:

So, what I’m going the long way to say, is that I never had an issue, as some do, with calling myself autistic. It was the first label I came in contact with…and is shared with others whom I admire and feel a kinship to, such as Temple Grandin.

As a label, Asperger’s has done well by me, too. It is a strong identity – one that’s been groomed to have more positive connotations than some other diagnostic labels. Because of that, there are those that feel that replacing the Asperger’s label with an autism label would change people’s perceptions too greatly. That it will lower peoples’ expectations of our abilities through negative connotations.

Perhaps I’m naive…but I like to hope that the opposite will be true. That maybe some of the optimism that some apply to the Asperger’s label can be absorbed into the autism label. And maybe, it will encourage us to look at abilities more fluidly, and see that ability is not black or white.

(Find the illustration and other responses to Asperger’s becoming a part of the Autism Spectrum in the NYT article “A Question About a Diagnosis.”)