Word: mental
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...ways that Americans can go crazy dates at least to 1840, when the Census included a question on "idiocy/insanity." From those two simple categories, we now have more than 300 separate disorders; they are listed in a 943-page book called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM for short. The book is important because doctors, insurers and researchers all over the world use it as a reference, a dictionary of everything humanity considers to be mentally unbalanced...
...what might go into the book's latest version, the DSM-5. Currently, the DSM is disjointed and disorganized - at times well researched and at times anachronistic. The present version, the DSM-IV-TR (the TR stands for "text revision"), was published in 2000. It begins with "mild mental retardation" moves on to common illnesses like depression and odd ones like dyspareunia (painful sexual intercourse not due to a medical condition) and ends with the vague "personality disorder not otherwise specified." The rhyme and reason behind the DSM have always been murky; the book, like our brains, is a huge...
...Contain the definition of a mental illness within sensible borders. A major problem with earlier versions was mission creep: In 1980, the APA published DSM-III, which radically expanded what clinicians could define as disordered. One example: depression. The pre-1980 definition had described "depressive neurosis" as "an excessive reaction of depression due to an internal conflict or to an identifiable event such as the loss of a love object." The much longer 1980 definition (which carried on into DSM-IV and DSM-IV-TR, with slight modifications) omitted the requirement that symptoms be "excessive" in proportion to cause...
...proposed revisions would change that and once again take into account severity of symptoms. The new definition of all mental disorders would include the proviso that they "must not be merely an expectable response to common stressors and losses...
...healthy and progressive education. Unfortunately, this type of instruction is not employed within the borders of Saudi Arabia at the high school or college level. Saudi schools do not emphasize the importance of independent thinking, opting instead to conveniently spoon-feed students information that does not test their mental capabilities...