Wednesday, April 07, 2010

I'm mad as hell and ... they're giving me medication

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) is the "bible" of psychiatry. It is the book in which psychs list everything they think they can make a fast buck out of ... oops, I mean, in which psychs list all mental illnesses that can be billed against medical insurance.

Every new edition contains more and more illnesses and every new edition adds more and more normal behavior to the list of illnesses.

Take for example the famous monologue by Peter Finch that won him an Oscar in the movie "Network" (a must-see movie from the 1970's). According to the latest proposed DSM, rather than receive an Oscar, Finch would instead be put on psychiatric drugs because his speech clearly shows that he has a disorder. Yes folks, getting mad is now a psychiatric disorder: Psychiatrists say that being angry is a mental illness.

FYI: Here is the monologue: