Psychiatrically Diagnosing Societal Ills...
Work in progress, satire driven by adaptive humor…
As a Psychiatrist, I’m trained in the use of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) to classify mental illnesses.
War, poverty, lack of education, intergenerational trauma, high childhood adversity within certain subgroups, and related factors are largely social problems.
Labeling them exclusively as individual diseases misses the mark because the interventions required to treat and prevent them are not only on the individual level, but require intervention for prevention and treatment with smaller groups (like families and schools) and on broad levels, with changes in policy and resource allocation.
With the exception of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD) and stress-related reactions, by and large none of the diagnostic criteria include an external cause of the disorder. PTSD requires a traumatic event to have occurred, but Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder do not mention life events as causal factors. Of course, clinicians understand that these conditions are precipitated by factors which include life events, and treat accordingly.
At the same time, there are strong biological factors which are individual, increasing…
