The DSM has been my main gripe with psychiatry. I always thought it was a vague way of labeling things that society deems unacceptable, rather than a way of identifying mental disorders.
A quote right outta the old manual:
"clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning"
It boils down to if its not causing distress, leave them alone, which sounds like a reasonably libertarian outlook on life.
Its also a classification system, not a theory (why it happens) or a treatment plan system.
The best computer science analogy I can come up with is its something like "a list of sorting algorithms and how to identify them" rather than a history of each, or implementation guidelines. So if you see an algorithm that sweeps thru an array sequentially and swaps adjacent items if they're outta order, and keeps doin it until it can't find anything outta order anymore, then you're probably looking at a bubble sort.
Nothing to do with how someone who read Knuth or wikipedia would laugh at you, or how to avoid 0/1 referenced array bugs (and at the other end, running off the end of the array) or how to use (or not use) pointer arithmetic, etc.
>Its also a classification system, not a theory (why it happens) or a treatment plan system.
This is the exact problem. It provides a means for categorizing what could be considered normal mental phenomena, and then calls it a disorder.
As far as your quote: '"clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning" It boils down to if its not causing distress, leave them alone, which sounds like a reasonably libertarian outlook on life.'
There are plenty of kids who were diagnosed with ADHD and other disorders via the coercive force of their parents and teachers who would disagree with the above statement.
