Asians have traditionally resisted the lure of psychiatrists and their drugs, and so the psychs have intensified their efforts to turn Asians into consumers of mental health services. While nearly 20% of Americans seek mental health treatments, less than 10% of those of Asian heritage do so. The psychs – with their strategy of medicalization of many normal behaviors – are trying to establish that those of Asian heritage are as mentally ill as the rest of Americans who have been convinced through direct-to-consumer ads that they have “restless leg syndrome,” “caffeine-induced sleep disorder,” “compulsive shopping disorder,” or “disruptive behavior disorder not otherwise specified” that need treatment with psychoactive drugs.
This “disagnostic inflation” according to one psychiatrist appears as medicalization, DSM imperialism and other descriptive terms whereby ordinary or quirky behaviors well within the bounds of acceptance in society are redefined as psychiatric disorders for which some expensive dangerous psychoactive drug is just the ticket.
As an example of “diagnostic creep” Autism was once a rare but severe disorder which just grew and grew, including less severe behaviors, such as children who don’t play well with others and so forth. Then in 2013, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5 – used to bill insurance for disorders voted into existence by psychiatrists – pulled all the lesser behaviors into a gigantic category called “Autism Spectrum Disorder.”
But according to Swedish and Danish studies of more than a million children, there was no real increase in autism even while those diagnosed with autism increased significantly. “Two-thirds of the increase in autism diagnoses in Denmark were due to the way the disorder is diagnosed and monitored,” said a report .
