The Unscientific Basis for Mental Disorder Diagnosis

While medicine�s scientific procedures are verifiable, psychiatry�s lack of any systematic approach to mental health and, most importantly, its continued lack of measurable results, have contributed greatly to its declining reputation, both among science-based professions and the population at large.

The development in 1948 of the sixth edition of the World Health Organization�s  International Classification of Diseases (ICD) , which incorporated psychiatric disorders (as diseases) for the first time, and the publication of DSM in the United States in 1952, were psychiatry�s early steps towards a system of diagnosis. They represented an attempt to emulate and gain acceptance from medicine, which, over the course of many centuries, had earned a reputation for being able to resolve physical ailments.

�Mental disorders� are established by a vote of APA Committee members. A psychologist attending DSM hearings said, �The low level of intellectual effort was shocking. Diagnoses were developed by majority vote on the level we would use to choose a restaurant. You feel like Italian, I feel like Chinese, so let�s go to a cafeteria. Then it�s typed into the computer. It may reflect on our naivet�, but it was our belief that there would be an attempt to look at things scientifically.�

Dr. Margaret Hagen, professor of psychology at Boston University, summarily dismisses the DSM: �Given their farcical �empirical� proce- dures for arriving at new disorders with their associated symptoms lists, where does the American Psychiatric Association get off claim- ing a scientific, research-based foundation for its diagnostic manual? This is nothing more than science by decree. They say it is science, so it is.�

In the absence of objective, scientific evidence, psychiatry has decreed the following to be mental illnesses:

Expressive Language Disorder

Phonological Disorder

Caffeine Intoxication/Withdrawal Disorders

Conduct Disorder

Mathematics Disorder

Nicotine Use or Withdrawal Disorder

Non-Compliance with Treatment Disorder

Separation Anxiety Disorder

Sibling Rivalry Disorder

Phase of Life Problem

Sexual Abuse of a Child Problem

In his book  A Dose of Sanity the late neurologist and psychiatrist, Sydney Walker III, wrote of the dangers of the  DSM, concluding, �It�s important to remember � that a number of  DSM-oriented psychiatrists have, to a large degree, abandoned the science of differential diagnosis, and thus consider most psychiatric illnesses �incurable.� This leaves them with only two weapons: psychotherapy and drugs. It�s not surprising that they�re among the first to leap on each new drug bandwagon; like long-ago doctors who recommended bleeding for every ailment, they have little else to offer.�

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