The Year That Was - Almost Over, But Not Letting Go: Part II

My second (first here) idiosyncratic installment in looking back on how 2010 unfolded:

Old Movie of the Year: Groundhog Day

Updating the DSM is an exercise that affords us that rare opportunity to think mental illness afresh. The last time this happened was in the late seventies with the publication of the ground-breaking DSM-III of 1980. Think of the DSM-III as the old DOS operating system. Its successor editions (the last one was 1994) were essentially DOS updates. In Feb this year, the American Psychiatric Association unveiled its draft to DOS-5 - um DSM-5 - due for publication in 20013.

In sticking to DOS, as I reported here on numerous occasions, those responsible for the next DSM - which sets the scene for the next 20 years - are keeping us stuck in 1980 Groundhog Day forever.

If nothing else, a soul-searching discussion would have been useful. Hell, I would have settled for an instant message. An instant message where numerals pose as words, even. Is this asking too much? Yes, apparently.

Psychiatrist of the Year: Emil Kraepelin

Okay, he’s sort of dead - well, completely dead - which is a rather large technically. But even dead, this guy leaves the live psychiatrists for dead. (Wait, let me rephrase that.) Kraepelin, who was born the same year as Freud, coined the term, manic-depression, which - contrary to conventional thinking - is not synonymous with bipolar.

Kraepelin saw all forms of depression (even unipolar depression) in an obvious relationship with clear overlap. This translates into a lot of unipolar depressions behaving like bipolar, even if mania is not involved. This may also explain why antidepressants do not work for a good many people, and may indeed be harmful. The DSM-III of 1980 can be forgiven for getting this wrong. The DSM-5, due out in 2013, cannot.

No doubt about it: If we could somehow “undead” Kraepelin, he’d be saying take a match to the DSM and start over. Instant message: "G8 stuff, homey! All 4U! :) :)"

Person of the Year: You

That’s right, you - patients and loved ones. In April this year, I delivered a keynote to DBSA Kansas. As part of my talk, I asked my audience to come up with a one-sentence description of depression. The answers bore some relationship to the DSM, but were much more insightful and in touch with reality:

“Like having two doberman pinschers waiting for you to get out of bed in the morning.”

“You're on a raft, in the middle of a huge ocean, you can't see any land anywhere, on any horizon, and you're totally becalmed.”

“It's like trying to walk through mud up to your neck.”

These were just some of the responses, very much in line from what I have been hearing from fellow patients and loved ones for years. But then again, only we know what we have to live though. Too bad psychiatry isn’t interested in hearing from us. “Is that a better list than the DSM list?” I asked my audience. “Congratulations,” I concluded, “you guys have beat the best psychiatrists in the world. Give yourselves a round of applause.”

More to come ...