The revised version of the DSM-5, the American reference book which describes and classifies the mental disorders, added to its list of the signs of depression which looked a year after the death of a loved one. Some psychiatrists denounce a pathologization of “normal” sorrow.
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A new psychiatric disorder is born. A revised DSM-5 version, the famous Mental Diagnostic Manual and Mental Disorders (APA), release on March 18, includes a new pathology among the 265 listed: the “extended mourning disorder”.
“The circumstances in which we live with more than 675,000 deaths due to COVID in the United States, can accentuate the risk of dealing with a prolonged mourning disorder, the President of the APA, Vivian B said . Pending, in a statement of September 23rd. If you have recently lost a loved one, it is very important to take stock. The sorrow in these circumstances is normal, but not at certain levels and not most of the day, almost Every day, for months. “What is a” normal “sorrow for a bereaved person? The latter addition to the DSM again poses the question of the border between the normal and the pathological.
The content of the DSM has been debating for years. Published for the first time in 1952, with a list of less than 100 psychopathologies, the DSM has become over the years the psychiatrist’s reference manual. It is used in courts, prisons or schools, and allows access to care and refunds. Always thicker, it is judged responsible for the extension of the field of pathological. The Parisian Patrick Landman psychiatrist even founded the Stop DSM collective in 2010.
“Mourning prolonged a pathology goes in the sense of psychiatrization and the medicine of everyday life, Judge Patrick Landman. In the DSM, the variations of the standard are very limited.” If he admits that Mourning can become pathological, he warns against a “diagnosis of circumstance”, opportunistic during pandemic times. “The psychic structure of people has not changed because social circumstances change. Mourning is part of the human condition.”
“Stupid diagnosis”
DSM-III and IV considered that people in mourning escaped the diagnosis of major depressive disorder: it was considered normal to present signs of depression after the loss of a loved one. In 2013, the DSM-5 blow up this “clause” of exception: it recognizes that mourning does not miserate the patient against depression and it rushes it often. This decision followed long and bright criticism, including that of Allen Frances, Professor Emeritus in Duke and Director of the DSM-IV team (1994).
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