My Recent Silence and A Voice That Matters: What's Wrong with Psych Diagnosis Debate

First published on May 21, 2013 by Paula J. Caplan, Ph.D. in Science Isn't Golden

In recent weeks, as the publication of the psychiatric diagnostic manual called DSM-5 approached, and media people paid it much attention, people who know that my work on exposing the truth about psychiatric diagnosis began more than a quarter of a century ago (1) have contacted me to ask why I was not adding my voice to the brouhaha.

I was aware of two of the answers to their question: (i)I had nothing to say beyond what I have been saying for decades, and (ii)I am busy.

Then I realized there was another: I was experiencing a kind of existential nausea, watching the sound and fury whipped up by both DSM advocates and critics and by the media. Why the nausea? I struggle constantly against becoming jaded, but when for decades you've seen powerful people get away with distortions and even lies, lies that hurt the people they profess to help, it's hard not to want at times to flee from the field. In all the frenzy, what was appallingly left out -- as it has always been from the activities of those who have the power to make real change -- was any real work to redress the harm done on the basis of psychiatric diagnosis over decades to living, breathing human beings. More about this later.