Friday, 29 August 2025

On The Topic Of 'Crazy'

 From my college years....I took one simple class of psychology (101), with some retired mental health director/professor who'd spent the 1950s/1960s/1970s....running a couple of different clinics in Washington and Oregon.  

Most of these evenings....he'd give 20-odd stories of whacked-out people, and I usually left class by 9:30....in some daze...wondering  just how many nut-cases really exist in the world.  I'd be at midnight....thinking over things. It was the wrong evening class to take.

For the sake of eyeballing mental illnesses are typically categorized based on the DSM-5, which has 20 major categories of 'problems':

Neurodevelopmental Disorders (e.g., autism, ADHD)

Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders

Bipolar and Related Disorders

Depressive Disorders

Anxiety Disorders

Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders

Trauma- and Stressor-Related Disorders (e.g., PTSD)

Dissociative Disorders

Somatic Symptom and Related Disorders

Feeding and Eating Disorders (e.g., anorexia, bulimia)

Elimination Disorders

Sleep-Wake Disorders

Sexual Dysfunctions

Gender Dysphoria

Disruptive, Impulse-Control, and Conduct Disorders

Substance-Related and Addictive Disorders

Neurocognitive Disorders (e.g., dementia)

Personality Disorders

Paraphilic Disorders

Other Mental Disorders (catch-all for conditions not fitting elsewhere)

Over the past thirty years....I've of the mind that we need to force everyone through some mental-health class by age 15, and double-up by age 18 (in college).  

No comments: