If left unchecked, every organization multiplies and expands. Always. This phenomenon is criticized as a characteristic of government, but is also typical of professions that enjoy the privilege of establishing their own standards and membership.
Prominent among them is the American Psychiatric Association. From only a dozen forms of serious mental incapacity a century ago, by 2000 these Svengalis of psychoflapdoodles had expanded their turf to nearly 400 separate, definable, mental disorders deserving of medical treatment.
And there is money to be made from these ailments. Treatment generally requires drugs. GlaxoSmithKline’s antidepressant drug Paxil is a case in point. To market its new drug, this corporate benefactor of mankind chose Japan, a nation apparently free of much concern for self-misery or depression – believing (like Maine) that things were “the way life should be.” A new collection of symptoms, Kojoro no kazi, “a cold of the soul,” was designed and drilled into the nations’ consciousness, much as Toyotas are sold in Brunswick, and by 2008 GlaxoSmithKline was peddling a billion bucks a year of its chemical to ailing Nipponese.
As Lucius Flatley, professor of bull and baloney, observed at the coffee shop last week, “Ever since Freud and his merry group of bearded elves made psychiatry respectable, there has been a ‘cachet of the couch,’ in which shrinks have been inventing new mental illnesses faster than rabbits breed.”
Behaviors we have long considered manageable personal problems have now become diseases that require treatment. So many disorders have been discovered that a new edition of the official bible of mental illnesses, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM III), is scheduled to hit the bookstores this year with entirely new categories of illnesses. A draft will be available this month.
This tsunami of mental multi-miseries was richly enabled by the Vietnam adventure. The true traumas of combat depression often borne by soldiers coming home were properly classified as “stress disorders” – which made phobias available to the common man. These war-induced genuine illnesses allowed shrinks to throw a horse blanket over other moods, many of which are far from grievous.
We are told that anger while driving creates a disabling sickness in about 5 percent of drivers – anger that may result in Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED). If a driver fires a gun at someone who cuts him off in traffic, please understand that he or she may be a candidate for medical forgiveness. Paid treatment is needed.
Morning coffee may now produce CAD (Caffeine-induced Anxiety Disorder). For those who seek sexual solace over the phone there is TSA (Telephone Scatalogia Addiction). ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) is pandemic in the U.S. American psychiatrists issue 90 percent of the world’s prescriptions for psychological depression. The number of Americans taking anti-depressants doubled from 13.3 million to 27 million in nine years (1996-2005). In the U.S., anti-depressant prescriptions produced $9.6 billion for the drug companies during 2008 alone.
The Harvard School of Public Health has just announced that RLS (Restless Leg Syndrome) and ED (Erectile Disorder) may be related and may result from low dopamine – for which there are drugs. In the new DSM III manual, Transvestic Fetishism and Gender Identity Disorder are expected to receive “less judgmental names.” How about UAW (Uncertain About Whatever)?
There are other disorders as yet unnamed, and Flatley’s coffee-drinking compatriots suggested a few: GWC (Going Without Chocolate). SAH (Suffering a Hangover). TLASW (Thinking a Lot About Someone Else’s Wife.) How about SOP (Slobbering Over Palin)? The famous “Twinkie Defense” argued that a killer should be legally found innocent because he had eaten so many Twinkies that he developed an urge he could not control.
Behavior long thought of as self-indulgent or unrestrained has now assumed the status of a mental illness. Shrinks claim that a third of the American population suffers from some type or degree of a mental disorder classifiable as medically disabling.
Life used to be manageable as long as the farmer’s daughter stayed out of the haymow, unhappy clerk typists still massaged their office machines, sleepy wives would still prepare breakfast and adolescent boys managed to survive acne and nocturnal emissions. But, no more. We now need expensive drugs in order for society to function. Political Correctness has risen from professorial pastime to a serious economic problem.
Fortunately, there are treatments other than chemical. The Vijerdal Psychiatric Institute of Holland provides a “Recreational Therapy” program in which gentlemen institutionalized for mental problems are transported once a week to the Club D’Amour for a session of subsidized sex – where they are promised as many “treatments as they would like” in 30 minutes.
Lucius asked the coffee group, “Who wouldn’t approve a penny on the sales tax for such a center in Lewiston/Auburn?”
Rodney Quinn, who lives in Gorham, is a former Maine secretary of state. He can be reached at rquinn@maine.rr.com.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
