Nuggets from Occult Invasion—A Raging Epidemic of Mental Illnesses?

To increase their power over society, psychiatrists and psychologists constantly invent new kinds of “mental illness.” Americans now suffer by the millions from alleged maladies that were unknown a few years ago. These are defined in the “Bible of mental illness,” the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM). When first published in 1952 it listed 112 mental disorders, compared with a half-dozen 100 years earlier. DSM-II in 1968 listed 163. There were 224 in DSM-III, published in 1980. DSM-IV came out in 1994, and the list of disorders had grown to 374! Whence this raging epidemic of new mental illnesses—or are we being duped? One newspaper editor wrote sarcastically:

“Does your 10-year-old dislike doing her math homework? Better get her to the nearest couch because she’s got No. 315.4, Developmental Arithmetic Disorder. Maybe you’re a teenager who argues with his parents. Uh-oh. Better get some medication pronto because you’ve got No. 313.8, Oppositional Defiant Disorder…. I am not making these things up. (That would be Fictitious Disorder Syndrome)…. I know there are some cynics out there who…wouldn’t be caught dead on a psychiatrist’s couch…. Your unwillingness to seek professional help is itself a symptom of a serious mental problem. It’s right here in the book: 15.81, Noncompliance with Treatment Disorder.”

A CBS-TV special reported that uppermost in the minds of the youth interviewed were nagging doubts about mental health. In trying to show the folly that has overtaken America one author has written:

“For eons some children, like adults, have always been more active than others. Perhaps they play harder or wander mentally because of a short attention span…[and] parents simply dealt with this as a fact of life…. And the wise parent saw that children, like adults, learn to change their behavior for the better… However, psychiatry has deemed there is something wrong…. The child and parents thought he was normal when they walked into the psychiatrist’s office. They think he is abnormal when they walk out…. As a normal child he would have been tolerated, endured, disciplined…whatever parents have done for thousands of years. And in all likelihood, he would have grown out of it with little significance made of the situation. As an abnormal child, however, he would have been treated much differently by his parents, his teachers, and possibly his classmates. He would have been ‘special’…on years of medication…. He himself would, of course, think he had something inherently wrong with him…. Most likely this sense of ‘abnormality’ would be with him the rest of his life….”