New DSM Committee Announces Plans to Brainwash Its Readers

     The American Psychiatric Association has now established a number of committees to begin working on revamping their next edition of the DSM, their diagnostic bible. One committee, writing on the purpose of the new DSM, noted that the new edition will no longer be geared to providing diagnostic guidance for “known” medical problems. Instead, its purpose will be to “meaningfully change the way clinicians think.”

     In other words, brainwash them.

     And how does this committee plan to achieve that? By using what they call “candidate” biomarkers to define mental illness. 

     And how does a biomarker achieve “candidate” status? If it can be presented to have a theoretical biological association with a given mental “illness.” Of course these candidates can only be theoretical because there is no scientific validation that there are any such biomarkers. None have ever been found.

     And how are they going to introduce these candidate biomarkers into the DSM to effectively brainwash their readers into believing they might actually exist?

     Easy. They’ll include any potential biomarkers from any research – flawed or bogus as it might be – that hint at some association between a gene or a neuron and a mental “disorder.” There are now only two FDA “approved” biomarkers, one for Alzheimer’s disease and one for opioid disorder, and neither of these have been scientifically validated, of course. They too are theoretical.

     “Including only validated biomarkers, as per FDA criteria,” the committee states, “would be too limiting since these exist only for Alzheimer’s and opioid use at this time.”

     That’s right. Let’s not even let a little bogus “truth” like these FDA-approved biomarkers get in the way of our brainwashing campaign when we can cajole, beguile and hoodwink these clinicians with the promise of thousands of biomarkers lurking right on the verge of imminent discovery.

     This new DSM looks to be another master class in psychiatric tomfoolery, at best, or covert brainwashing, at worst.

     Should we just laugh at these guys…or incarcerate them?