A Sick Nation

The rampant pathologizing of the American mind is sign of a nation on decline

Thought leaders in psychology, unwitting citizens, and those in Congress are making our children sick with mental pathologies that do not clearly exist.

Psychologists' primary reference point for making medical diagnoses -- the DSM V -- contains so many ambiguities in its diagnostic criterion that it cannot be considered totally reliable.

Likewise typical Americans co-opt these flawed prognostications by adopting them as their own. It’s not unheard of to have a family or friend that has self diagnosed themselves with OCD, ADHD, depression, or an anxiety disorder.

Politicians too have a vested interest in the pathologizing of our children.  As former psychiatrist Thomas Szaz says “politicians, pandering to the public’s ever-present fears of dangers, find the psychiatrists’ willingness to define deviance as disease and social control as treatment useful in their quest to enlarge the scope and power of the therapeutic state.”

For both the left and the right this pathologizing of our children for profit and power should be alarming.

Republicans should be appalled by the state’s willingness to use these newly discovered pathologies as an opportunity to push ADHD or depression medication on children.

Likewise liberals should reject the exploitation of the poor and unaware for the benefit of corporations and big pharma.  

And together both parties should reject the pathologizing of our children as a larger cultural disease.  Of course there is no immediate sollution for the problem.  But a healthy appreciation for life -- even in contending with its hardships -- and a strong belief in self-overcoming would be a vast improvement over the self pathologizing of the therapeutic state.

For in the therapeutic state greater illness is the perennial result of any and all attempted cure.

Zigmund Reichenbach holds a M.A. in Philosophy from West Chester University.  You can find him commenting on news stories of national and state interest at his Facebook page Zigmund Reichenbach -- Commentator or you can follow him on Twitter @zreichenbach1.  To support the creation of articles like these visit our Patreon here.