"Psychiatry may have lost sight of what it means to be normal. When every conflict earns a diagnosis, few people count as "healthy." To know normal, we must have clear empirical criteria for illness."
"Frances' central contention was that contemporary mental health practice has pathologized ordinary human variation. In recent years, it seems that nearly everyone carries some form of diagnosis. The currently fashionable ones include adult ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, and complex trauma. Narcissism is commonly imputed to others but rarely to oneself. A decade or two ago, bipolar disorder dominated the diagnostic landscape; before that, it was multiple personality disorder, and so forth."
Psychiatric diagnosis has expanded to encompass a wide range of ordinary human behaviors, resulting in diagnostic inflation that blurs the line between health and illness. Common contemporary labels include adult ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, complex trauma, and frequent attributions of narcissism to others. Diagnostic prominence has shifted over decades—examples include multiple personality disorder and bipolar disorder—indicating recurring diagnostic fads. Psychoanalytic approaches place less emphasis on formal categorization yet often detect pathology in patients. The erosion of a stable concept of normality underscores the need for clear empirical criteria to distinguish normal variation from genuine mental disorders.
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