Comment by jayd16
6 hours ago
I think the DSM 5 says a disorder must cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.
6 hours ago
I think the DSM 5 says a disorder must cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.
Correct. But even that definition risks over pathologizing the human experience. It creates a distinction between a broken brain and a reasonable reaction to a broken environment.
DSM defines a disorder by how well an individual fits into the current economic and social system. Technically, if someone is so blissfully happy they stop showing up to their job, they would actually meet the criteria for a disorder.
Just like if someone lives in a high-crime area with little security they may have crippling anxiety. DSM would say they have a generalized anxiety disorder, but I would argue they don't, they are experiencing a reasonable reaction to a broken environment.
We are far too quick to jump to "this person isn't functioning in society, therefore something must be wrong with them" instead of doing the hard work of adapting our social and economic systems to be more inclusive of different types of human experiences.
Case in point, homosexuality used to be a sociopathic personality disorder, and pre-DSM we thought it was a mental illness causing enslaved people to want to escape slavery.
> We are far too quick to jump to "this person isn't functioning in society, therefore something must be wrong with them" instead of doing the hard work of adapting our social and economic systems to be more inclusive of different types of human experiences.
Careful saying things like that, someone might accuse you of being a socialist (slight /s)