NEW DEFINITIONS OF CRAZY PROPOSED TO BOOST DRUG SALES

Facing a drop in the sales of highly profitable prescription anti-psychotic and mind bending drugs, doctors charged with revising psychiatry’s encyclopedia of mental disorders are redrawing the lines of what society defines as normal and not normal, between eccentricity and illness, between self-indulgence and self-destruction — and, by extension, when and how patients should be treated and given those expensive drugs.

The eagerly awaited revisions — to be published, if adopted, in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM),  are due in 2013 .

Soon you will know if you are still officially crazy as an OCD or a PTSD, or whether you will get your own new definition that you can form a support group around.

In order to assist the shrinks in this effort, the staff of the General Delivery University School of Medical Fraud offer these new DSM suggestions:

Political Identity Confusion Syndrome (PICS) 

"The new DSM for Political Identity Confusion Syndrome (PICS) has the potential of including over half of all Americans over the age 18," said Dr. Fred Freud, director of the GDU School of Medical Fraud.

PICS can be summarized as a case where a person thinks and feels like a Democrat, but consistently votes Republican, to their personal and our national detriment.

"PICS sufferers truly believe global warming is a real threat, want labor justice, and stuff like that, but when they get in a voting booth, millions of them vote for a Republican. In extreme cases, the confused voter only selects conservative Republicans," explained Dr. Freud.

The criteria for determining whether a person suffers from PICS involves a positive hit on 5 of the 10 potential symptoms, including:

(1) The person believes global warming is a real threat, but thinks the solution is only possible if accomplished with the support of an oil company.

(2) The person believes in labor justice and the right to unionize, but would never join a union themselves because they are a white collar employee.

(3) The person believes in human rights, but thinks anyone who supports Supreme Court Justice Scalia is cool.

(4) The person believes in energy conservation, but drives an SUV.

(5) The person makes over $50,000 a year, and believes the government ought to soak the rich with taxes, rich being defined as $100,000 above whatever their own income level is.

(6) The person believes the United States ought to base its foreign policy on human rights and social justice, and wants to bomb the crap out of North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and a few other places.

(7) The person has never been a victim of crime, but thinks the crime rate in America is rising rapidly, and the perpetrators are mostly young and black.

(8) The person thinks everyone ought to pay their fair share of taxes, and cheats on their tax return just a little.

(9) The person believes all children should get an equal education, and then does favors to get their kids in the best schools or sends their kids to a charter school.

(10) The person wants clean air, clean water, and virgin forests, as long as they can drive their ATVS through them.

"There are already 314 possible diagnosis of mental illness," said GDU's Dr. Freud, "and just about everyone would fit at least one."

But being mentally ill and admitting it are two separate problems.

"Most of the people are clinically nuts, but they function well enough not to justify treatment," said Dr. Freud. "The real issue is getting them to realize they need help, then getting them into the medical system so they can be the source of thousands of the dollars of cash flow to the medical economy."

"Soft" mental illnesses people would admit to having is proving to be a gold mine for drug companies.

"In the old days things like compulsive shopping was seen as a moral character defect," said Dr. Freud. "Last week compulsive shopping got its own DSM because Paxil was discovered to reduce the desire to spend money in malls."

An unfortunate side effect was that people shifted their shopping addiction to the internet.

"The creation of a DSM for shopping problems means insurance companies will pay for the medication," said Dr. Freud. "This means more drug sales."

Drug companies reportedly have spend hundred of millions of dollars researching new potential mental illnesses that could be treated with their medications.

"It would not be out of line to suggest many new mental illnesses are just symptoms of more traditional problems that have been given new names so they will be accepted by the public, and then people will take the drugs," added Freud.

"In the bad old days, all we had was paranoid schizophrenia, manic depression, and a variety of psychosis. No one wanted to admit their were psychotic, so only a small percentage of people got treatment, and that was usually in lieu of prison," noted Freud. "And no one wanted to admit a member of their family was batty."

With the elimination of virtually all involuntary commitments to mental institutions, and the "de-institutionalizing" of many mentally ill, the only way to assure treatment is to make it faddish to get help.

"The new political illness will give many people who feel guilt over voting for Republicans a chance to redeem themselves by taking anti-depressant meds," said Dr. Freud.

NEXT:  ECONOPATHIC DISORDER DEFINED.