Three Days In One

This one is a doozy.  Waterboarding a four year old girl because she either couldn't or wouldn't recite her ABCs.  And as Andrew Sullivan so helpfully pointed out, the original story referred to waterboarding as a CIA torture technique.  Whatever my dad's faults might have been, raising his hand in anger wasn't one of them.

Crazy is as crazy does.  Or something like that.  The new version of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Diseases (DSM) is trying for some lovely new definitions.  From classifying Shyness as a disease, they have moved on to childhood temper tantrums.  Two year olds beware!  All a toddler has to do is have a tantrum several times a week and if confirmed by a doctor before the age of ten, instead of surviving the Terrible Twos the toddler will now have a permanent diagnosis of "temper dysregulation with dysphoria".  Mother's little helper will be a whole new class of drugs.

Did you eat too much at the Pro Bowl party two weeks ago and then did it again during the Super Bowl?  You now have a binge eating disorder.  I wonder if Thanksgiving and Christmas count towards that?  But my favorite new disorder possibility is "risk syndromes".  There is nothing wrong with the person.  Yet.

For example, a moody teenager who displays "excessive suspicion, delusions and disorganized speech or behavior" may be labeled as having psychosis risk syndrome. The panel estimated that a quarter to a third of people who suffer from those "symptoms" go on to develop a psychotic disorder, and the writers acknowledged the new category could lead to inaccurate diagnosis of some who are not at risk.

"Given the severity of psychotic disorders, and evidence that early treatment may mitigate its long-term consequences, we believed that it was important to begin to recognise these conditions as early as possible," wrote Dr William Carpenter of the American Psychiatric Association's psychotic disorders work group.

Deviation from the norm must be stopped!  All children should exhibit proper behavior at all times! Or they will be medicated until they do.  Does anybody remember Zager and Evans?  We won't have to wait for the year 3535 before everything we think, do, or say is going to be in the pill we took today.BBB