Millions of healthy people, including shy or defiant children, grieving relatives, and people with fetishes, may be wrongly labeled as mentally ill by a new international diagnostic manual, specialists have said. In an analysis of an upcoming revision of the influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychologists, psychiatrists, and other experts said new categories of mental illness identified in the book were at best “silly” and at worst “worrying and dangerous.” “Many people who are shy, bereaved, eccentric, or have unconventional romantic lives will suddenly find themselves labeled as mentally ill,” said Peter Kinderman, head of Liverpool University’s Institute of Psychology at a briefing in London about widespread concerns over the manual. “It’s not humane, it’s not scientific, and it won’t help decide what help a person needs.” More than 11,000 health professionals have already signed a petition (at dsm5-reform.com) calling for the development of the fifth edition of the manualtobehaltedandre-thought.
