Well, I don't exaggerate. According to the new DSM Psychiatry manual, conducted by American specialists, considered the "Bible of Psychiatry" I would say yes: all children have a mental disorder.
But with the children they have exceeded, in my opinion, the line. I am no longer talking about the growing diagnoses of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children who are not allowed to have a child's life, nor of the exaggerated medication to which they are subjected according to some voices, no. I speak of a new disorder: have more than three tantrums a week for a year.
Disruptive mood dysregulation tratorno
I am talking about the new disorder that will now be included in the DSM catalog: children with a minimum of "three weekly episodes of irritability, outbursts and tantrums for more than a year" will be diagnosed with the disruptive mood dysregulation disorder."
The DSM was already announced as very controversial and considering pathological any human behavior that involves emotions that are not a placid acceptance of what happens to us and a feeling of unalterable well-being. And considered pathological, to be able to medicate it with some psychoactive drug that restores balance rather than cure a possible problem.
Concern about the medicalization of normal childhood
Thinking if I am very radical I have been diving in the net and I am glad to say that I am not the only one to manifest a great concern for the medicalization of childhood also among child health professionals.
I refer you, for example, to the magnificent blog coordinated by Dr. Jose Cristóbal Buñuel, Evidence-Based Pediatrics that echoes this feeling.
Dr. Buñuel adds information on what was commented on in the last Update Course of the Spanish Association of Pediatrics held in Madrid, at the roundtable of "Dividences", mention was made of the DSM-V as a possible "maker" of new child psychiatric disorders by converting some behaviors into mental illnesses. I will be attentive to the comments made by the Spanish medical agencies to the new DSM.
The diagnosis without scientific evidence?
Attention, so I have found out this diagnosis is not based on scientific evidence or any medical analysis, but on the data on the child's behavior.
He diagnosis of "disruptive mood dysregulation disorder" It will be mainly based on the testimony of the adults who are in charge of the child, there is not a single biological marker or medical test, nor a previous control of the environment and behavior of adults that can demonstrate that this disorder exists or that the tantrums ( three per week) are a pathological behavior.
Anyway, I will be attentive in case I have to rectify, but, in principle it does not seem that there are medical tests that reveal any demonstrable health problem and also, is it not normal for young children to have tantrums and these are often due to its natural process of growth or, at most, to factors and problems not mental of the child, but doctors or the environment?
Three tantrums per week I don't think they are a disorder
Do not, the child who has tantrums three times a week for a year can be labeled and surely medicated for that if his parents take him to a psychiatrist who is in favor of accepting that this disorder exists and that he does not have, it seems to be, no idea of the emotional evolution of normal children.
Anyway, as soon as the DSM comes into my hands, as I say, I will comment in detail on what the diagnoses are going to be based, because with the definition that is now handled it seems that all children could enter it.
From what I have seen so far, it seems to me that empathy towards children is not the strength of the DSM authors.
Remember it. Children who have strong tantrums and tantrums, who scream, lose control and disobey the adult now have something called disruptive mood dysregulation disorder.
In the end it will turn out that being a child is being sick and that all children have a mental disorder. I am having nightmares with the SOMA of "A happy world".
