"The Diagnosis"--addictions become disorders

Lane, Christopher. "Bitterness, Compulsive Shopping and Internet Addiction." Slate. 4 Sep. 2009.

http://www.slate.com/id/2223479/pagenum/all/#p2

The world has become an addictive world. As we live our lives we seem to become addicted to more things like shopping and internet addictions. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and the fith manual is expected in 2012. It seems that there are more and more small simple addictions that they are beginning to classify as mental disorders. At first the DSM was simply a guideline to the diseases and classifications of which diseases are which. Later when the DSM-III was published multiple ridiculous "mental disorders" were added some of which included: "caffeine intoxication disorder, mathematics disorder, sibling relational problem, and frotteurism, the "intentional rubbing up against or touching of another, usually unsuspecting, person for the purpose of sexual arousal." As time goes on the APA is classifying more and more nitpicky things as mental disorders and if this continues, soon over half the country will be defined, as by the APA and DSM, mentally ill.

I believe that this is a serious problem with the media today. We will see actions and tendencies that people have and will immediately decide that we have to classify them with some sort of disorder. The mentality that we have is that if they are not perfect, which no one is, then they must have some sort of mental disorder. Our nation is destroying itself. I think that this is very evident in an addiction to computer technology and cell phones. It seems that every time we hear about someone who is on their computer for hours at a time has an addiction. I know of very few people not guilty of this. It is easy to sit down and watch videos on youtube and hulu for hours, or to spend days looking at itunes searching for new songs and naming old ones, and one of the most common is wasting away time on facebook or myspace. We all do this. Only if you are expecting someone to hang out do you ever pay notice to it. We immediately wonder what is wrong with this person and that they must have some sort of disease. In reality we have no disease at all, and so should not be classified as having a disease. We are trying to find reason behind the things we waste our time away on. We can use these disorders as an excuse to waste away more time. “I have computer—video disorder, so it is okay that I am wasting all my time away, I’m mentally ill.” I believe that this is the mentality of our nation especially of the APA, and we need to move past it and realize that what we are doing is wasting our time, we may have better things to do and should be doing these things, but we should not make excuses such as disorders for our addictions. We can beat these addictions very simply with a little effort, and if we do not put forth this effort, with the way that the DSM manual is headed half our nation really will be classified as mentally ill.