2005 Fall Fashions: Straightjackets - 25% Are Batty & 55% Will Develop Mental Illness

JohnBckWLD · June 7, 2005, 5:49pm

Well, according to the NYT spin on the new National Institute of Mental Health study: Most (Americans) Will Be Mentally Ill at Some Point, Study Says

The survey is the most comprehensive in a series of censuslike mental health studies undertaken by the government. The findings of those studies are frequently cited by researchers, advocacy groups, policy makers and drug manufacturers to emphasize the importance of diagnosing and treating mental illness…

…Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, the primary sponsor of the study, said in a conference call with reporters, “The key point to remember is that mental disorders are highly prevalent and chronic”…

…On the other side are psychiatrists who say they believe that the estimates are inflated. “Fifty percent of Americans mentally impaired - are you kidding me?” said Dr. Paul McHugh, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University.

While the new survey was carefully done, Dr. McHugh said, “the problem is that the diagnostic manual we are using in psychiatry is like a field guide and it just keeps expanding and expanding.”

"Pretty soon," he said, “we’ll have a syndrome for short, fat Irish guys with a Boston accent, and I’ll be mentally ill”…

…The $20 million survey, which in addition to the government financing received some support from health research foundations and pharmaceutical companies, appears in a series of four papers in the June issue of The Archives of General Psychiatry. The investigators arranged face-to-face interviews with a broad cross section of 9,282 Americans ages 18 and over, and the interviewers asked the participants whether they had experienced periods of extended sadness, alcohol or drug abuse, irrational fears or a host of other symptoms. If so, the interviewers probed more pointedly about the episodes, asking how long they lasted and how they affected the participants’ behavior…

Kudos to Dr. McHugh - who apparently doesn’t suffer from comorbidity…yet.