In 2006 my life changed forever. I had my first full-blown terrifying manic episode. 911 was called. Under heavy police and paramedic escort, an ambulance took me to the crowded Psychiatric ER of St. Luke’s Hospital. I felt completely alone, too sick to realize what was happening to me at all. In my madness, an attending MD placed a large heavy book in my lap and directed me to read from the page to which it was opened. He asked me if I felt like what it described. I said no, he said yes. “Bipolar I disorder” was my new definition. I was then strapped to a stretcher, injected with an unknown drug. That’s all I remember of that terrible night. The next day I found myself restrained by leather straps to a bed afraid and alone. The book was the DSM, now in its fifth edition. For years that DSM has reflected very important medical findings and informed so many individual diagnoses; it is of incalculable value no doubt. But let’s consider its title: “the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” – I am not a diagnosis. I am not a statistic. I am not a disorder. I am me, a person who happens to have a medical condition. How stigmatizing! Don’t you think? In America, an estimated 1 in 5 individuals experiences a mental condition each and every year, and most never seek treatment. The tragedy of mental conditions is not that they exist or are experienced. It is the stigma they carry. And that stigma can kill. Each and every minute countless millions of Americans live with a mental health condition that can be treated in many cases. Yet they do not seek treatment due to stigma. Each and every year countless individuals take their very own lives due to stigma. Stigma is the real madness that exists in our society. If the very title of the DSM, the mental health bible, is stigmatizing how can we more broadly address stigma? So let’s start by calling it something else. Can we call it “The Manual of Mental Health Conditions” or “Conditions of the Human Mind”, something a bit more humanizing? Can we be a compassionate people? Can we offer the understanding that allows treatment to be sought more freely, comfortably, and naturally? It is a seemingly small measure. But it should be part of a necessary shift towards a more humanizing collective thinking and approach to mental health. Please, let’s call it something else.
