DSM-V: Continually Changing Definition of Mental Illness

Once upon a time, centuries ago when they still burned witches (okay, only last century, in 1973), the DSM-III, which is the diagnostic manual for the psychiatric profession, included homosexuality as a mental disorder.  But because psychiatry couldn't cure it, could not even figure out what caused it, and because they kept getting pressure from their gay colleagues (at least the way some tell the tale), the APA removed homosexuality from the DSM-III.  Similar efforts are now under way to get pedophilia (along with other sexual deviances) removed from the DSM.

Now there is considerable pressure to add "homophobia" to the list of mental illnesses in the DSM.  But this might be a bit too abrupt of a change--a bit too blunt of a reminder that psychiatry is closer to witch doctoring or politics than science.  Here's another example from February 9, 2012 Fox News:

Millions of healthy people - including shy or defiant children, grieving relatives and people with fetishes - may be wrongly labeled mentally ill by a new international diagnostic manual, specialists said on Thursday.

In a damning analysis of an upcoming revision of the influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health experts said its new categories and "tick-box" diagnosis systems were at best "silly" and at worst "worrying and dangerous."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/02/09/shyness-illness-in-dangerous-health-book-experts-say/?test=latestnews#ixzz1m0lckXzS

In 1970, what is now regarded by much of the American public as simply a personality quirk was a mental disorder.  What in 1970 was a personality quirk--shyness--will, if certain factions within the APA get their way, become a mental disorder.  And grieving?  That's not a personality quirk at all, but a normal human reaction to loss.

It is pretty clear that the APA is more an arm of the Democratic Party than a serious scientific organization.