All in Favor Say Aye—Psychiatry’s diagnostic manual

Without any scientific lab tests showing the presence or absence of mental problems, how does psychiatry’s diagnostic system work—and how did it become so prevalent?

Psychiatrists published the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1952, listing 112 so‑called “mental disorders” based not on standard scientific procedure, but votes sent in by psychiatrists.

With every new edition of the DSM, the diagnoses have not only expanded in number, but cast a wider net, now encompassing whole population segments. As a result, nearly one million children are diagnosed as bipolar.

In 2007, half a million children and teenagers took at least one prescription for an antipsychotic. And antipsychotic drugs, powerful chemicals designed originally for only the most seriously mentally troubled, are now a $22.8 billion industry.

Yet the average person is completely unaware that psychiatric diagnoses are not medical but merely voted‑on behaviors.

Which leads us to our next question: How do psychiatrists take these “disorders” and get people to believe they have them?