Category Archives: DSM

Portland Book Event – May 19th 7PM

Posted on April 18, 2013 by | Comments Off on Portland Book Event – May 19th 7PM

The Book of Woe: The Making of the DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry

Gary Greenberg will be at Powells’s Books May 19th to present his new book, The Book of Woe: The Making of the DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry.

The Book of Woe reveals the deeply flawed process by which mental disorders are invented and uninvented — and why increasing numbers of therapy patients are being declared mentally ill.

The Atlantic writer and author Daniel Smith says of the book: “If you want to understand how we think of mental suffering today—and why, and to what effect—read this book.”

Gary GreenburgGary Greenberg may be the only expert who has been on the inside of the “making of” the DSM-5 as a therapist while also reporting on it as a journalist.

Will Hall, director of Portland Hearing Voices and host of KBOO’s Madness Radio, will join Greenberg in conversation. This event is sponsored by Portland Hearing Voices.

Sunday, May 19th,  7 PM
Powell’s City of Books
1005 W Burnside
Portland, Oregon

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Posted in DSM, Events

Seminar: When Treatment Might Cause Harm

Posted on September 4, 2012 by | Comments Off on Seminar: When Treatment Might Cause Harm

Ron Unger LCSWPam Birrell PhD and Ron Unger LCSW present “When Treatment Might Cause Harm: Exploring Ethical Dilemmas related to Diagnosis, Drugs, and other Possibly Iatrogenic Aspects of Mental Health Care”

  • Eugene on 9/7/12
  • Portland on 9/14/12.

6 NASW CEU’s in ethics available.  Register early for the 3 week in advance “early bird” discount, or the scholarship offered to c/s/x!  See http://recoveryfromschizophrenia.org/home/

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Posted in DSM, Events, Psychotropic drugs

Not Diseases, But Categories of Suffering

Posted on January 31, 2012 by | Comments Off on Not Diseases, But Categories of Suffering

Gary Greenburgby Gary Greenberg, in The New York Times

You’ve got to feel sorry for the American Psychiatric Association, at least for a moment. Its members proposed a change to the definition of autism in the fifth edition of their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, one that would eliminate the separate category of Asperger syndrome in 2013. And the next thing they knew, a prominent psychiatrist was quoted in a front-page article in this paper saying the result would be fewer diagnoses, which would mean fewer troubled children eligible for services like special education and disability payments.

Then, just a few days later, another front-pager featured a pair of equally prominent experts explaining their smackdown of the A.P.A.’s proposal to eliminate the “bereavement exclusion” — the two months granted the grieving before their mourning can be classified as “major” depression. This time, the problem was that the move would raise the numbers of people with the diagnosis, increasing health care costs and the use of already pervasive mind-altering drugs, as well as pathologizing a normal life experience.

Fewer patients, more patients: the A.P.A. just can’t win. Someone is always mad at it for its diagnostic manual.

Read full article

Gary Greenburg is a practicing psychotherapist, and author of Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease.

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Posted in DSM

7 Reasons America’s Mental Health Industry is a Threat to Our Sanity

Posted on January 6, 2012 by | Comments Off on 7 Reasons America’s Mental Health Industry is a Threat to Our Sanity

Bruce Levineby Bruce E. Levine in AlterNet

Drug industry corruption, scientifically unreliable diagnoses and pseudoscientific research have compromised the values of the psychiatric profession.

The majority of psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals “go along to get along” and maintain a status quo that includes drug company corruption, pseudoscientific research and a “standard of care” that is routinely damaging and occasionally kills young children. If that sounds hyperbolic, then you probably have not heard of Rebecca Riley, and how the highest levels of psychiatry described her treatment as “appropriate and within responsible professional standards.”   Read more

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Posted in Children, DSM