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Friday, August 31, 2007As the title of this book — The Loss of Sadness — implies, psychiatrists who are influenced by the diagnostic practices that are encouraged in the DSM have become surprisingly imperceptive to the emotional miseries that life events evoke in their patients. These psychiatrists tend to perceive all such states of mind as major depressive disorder, with the result that they may reach for the prescription pad before they take a history. They practice, with the DSM as their guide, what Sir William Osler once dubbed "penny-in-the-slot therapeutics." ...Concentrating on depression, Horwitz and Wakefield describe how practicing psychiatrists gradually came to think about and treat specific states of demoralization and discouragement that arose from life contexts in the same way they treated pathologic mood disorders.... ...The authors note that the DSM-III — by sorting conditions according to their resemblances, rather than by seeking essential differences — medicalized human suffering, diminished attention to human meaning in the field of psychiatry, and hampered communication between patients and physicians. This process encouraged psychiatrists to think only in terms of medications .... Some would argue that the loss of sadness is a good thing. If all it takes is a pill to eliminate sorrow and anger, then the world's a better place, right? Maybe not. Do poets on Prozac create great works? posted by Sydney on 8/31/2007 09:49:00 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:How long do these authors feel a person should be miserable before receiving effective treatment? How many miserable people equal a potentially lost poem? By 10:30 AM , at
Since anti-depressants are fairly ineffective anyway, the real problem that the medicalization of sadness creates is the lack of alternative ways to manage it. By 8:20 PM , at |
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