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Essay / Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders...
The overall message and main argument proposed by this book is that the new version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM-5, will result in a huge increase of people who do not suffer from mental illness are diagnosed with a mental disorder and receive unnecessary treatment for it. Allen Frances argues that attributing everyday problems to mental disorders results in enormous disadvantages for individuals and society. Diagnosing a healthy person as mentally ill will lead to unnecessary and harmful medications, narrowing of horizons, misallocation of medical remedies, and waste of family and state budgets. It also states that we do not take responsibility for our own mental well-being. We no longer trust our self-healing brains, which have kept us sane all this time, but we trust drugs from pharmaceutical companies, "Big Pharma" as Frances calls it, which make immense profits. . According to Frances, the DSM-5 will transform the current diagnostic inflation in the United States into hyperinflation by transforming millions of "normal" people into "mentally disordered people." This will result in people who actually need psychiatric help being ignored, while the "well-worried" will receive most of the treatment, often causing them only harm. Frances traces the history of psychiatric fads throughout history and argues that every time we randomly label another aspect of the human condition as "disease," we move further away from our human adaptability and diversity, blunting everything which is normal and losing something fundamental. ourselves in the process.Frances not only criticizes the DSM-5, he also admits that it has made some mistakes in...... middle of paper ......ns on television in the United States United. Frances says pharmaceutical companies make huge profits. This is because they intimidate psychiatrists into recommending their medications to their patients. Frances also says that pharmaceutical companies bully psychiatrists into diagnosing people with mental disorders in order to put them on medication, which allows the pharmaceutical companies to make even more profits. The hyperinflation of mental disorders leads to more people receiving medications and, therefore, more profits for pharmaceutical companies. Frances also questions the responsibility of pharmaceutical companies in the hyperinflation of the diagnosis of people with mental disorders. In short, Frances wants to warn us of the danger and harmful consequences of the hyperinflation of the diagnosis of people with mental disorders and the responsibility of pharmaceutical companies in all this.