Do We Need to Change the Way We Are Thinking About Mental Illness?

"We would halve the amount of emotional distress in this country if we had the more equal, relatively cohesive, less debt-ridden political economics of our European neighbours":   Oliver James
 
 Do We Need to Change the Way We Are Thinking About Mental Illness?
The Observer, 12 May 2013

Experts on both sides of the debate over the classification of mental disorders make their case

NO Simon Wessely, member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists

Next week the American Psychiatric Association is publishing its fifth take on the classification of psychiatric disorders, the DSM-5. Judging by the sound and fury, you might be forgiven for thinking that this is something radical – a great breakthrough in our struggle to better understand mental disorders, or alternatively a dastardly plot to extend the boundaries of psychiatry into everyday life and emotions at the behest of greedy drug companies. Or, if the position statement from the Division of Clinical Psychology (DCP) is to be believed, an attempt to emphasise the biological causes of mental disorders over the social and psychological.
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