Read this article from the NY Times about the psychiatric bible’s expansion of the definition of addiction:
http:////www.nytimes.com/2012/05/12/us/dsm-revisions-may-sharply-increase-addiction-diagnoses.html?_r=3&emc=eta1&
One telling quote from the bottom of page 1 states:
While other medical specialties rely on similar diagnostic manuals, none have such influence. “The D.S.M. is distinct from all other diagnostic manuals because it has an enormous, perhaps too large, impact on society and millions of people’s lives,” said Dr. Allen J. Frances, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke, who oversaw the writing of the current version of the manual and worked on previous editions. “Unlike many other fields, psychiatric illnesses have no clear biological gold standard for diagnosing them. They present in different ways, and illnesses often overlap with each other.”
They are right: the DSM has a HUGE impact upon our society, legal system, and medical care just to name a few areas! And the reason WHY it has such an impact: because it addresses the SAME area that the Bible does – behaviors stemming from heart attitudes. Think about it: the Word of God is relevant to every area of life and that is what psychology’s “bible” the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders addresses, too. The Bible and the D.S.M. are COMPETITIVE books battling over the care of souls.
So the believer in Christ must decide WHICH book to believe and which book to reject…a book that never changes (the Bible) or one that has dramatically changed in now its fifth edition (DSM-V to be released soon).
One more sad but truthful quote from the article that cites a serious concern from a secular psychology expert, Dr. Frances:
Dr. Frances has been one of the most outspoken critics of the new draft version, saying that overly broad and vaguely worded definitions will create more “false epidemics” and “medicalization of everyday behavior.” Like some others, he has also questioned whether a private association, whose members stand to gain from treating more patients, should be writing the manual, rather than an independent group or a federal agency.
Again, read this powerfully truthful and insightful article about the expansion of the definition of “addiction,” the LACK of scientific evidence behind the DSM-V decisions in the revised edition, the concerns about over-diagnosing and over-medicating people with marginal issues, and the financial benefits that are going to explode for providers and pharmaceutical companies.
And we wonder why it is getting harder and harder to counsel people biblically…
-Mark (choosing this day Whom I will serve: Jesus Christ by trusting His Word of unchangeable truth)