Finding and Naming (Symptom) Constellations
By Guest Contributor Racheal Borgman, MA DSM IV-TR via Wikipedia.org The rhetorical component of illness is an important extension to the issues raised in last month’s post on the DSM . As Anjana Kallarackal pointed out, there are concerns aplenty when it comes to the DSM and how the committee goes about its categorizing work. But I was especially interested by the very first response to the post, by David Nicholson : "I wonder if it would be useful to try to put a number to the "negative consequences" of a given addiction… If we could decide how damaging some addiction was, maybe that would tell us how much to medicalize it as well. Insurance companies could decide that they'd cover cognitive behavioral therapy for internet addiction, but nothing beyond that." It’s an incredibly tempting solution. But then there’s the pesky rhetorical component of illness that must be contended with. For instance, how do we: know that an illness is an illness? know that a p...