We Were Super Wrong About Mental Illness: The DSM’s Origin Story

We reference the DSM pretty frequently on SciShow Psych, and for good reason: it’s considered the gold standard for professional mental health diagnosis in the United States, but it was an interesting journey to get there.

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Sources:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/9781118625392.wbecp012
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=AjFNAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA27
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https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm/history-of-the-dsm
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Images:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Battle_of_Brittany_-_Brest_02.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bomb_damage_in_Cherbourg,_France_after_its_liberation,_ca._June-July_1944._-_NARA_-_540061.tif
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sigmund_Freud_LIFE.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DSM-5_%26_DSM-IV-TR.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dsm-5-released-big-changes-dsm5.jpg

40 Comments

  1. Correction: The American Medico-Psychological Association became the American Psychiatric Association, not the American Psychological Association, and it was the American Psychiatric Association that put together the DSM. Thanks to those who pointed that out!

  2. The DSM is decried by both the NIMH as well as it's former editors as complete (not partial) pseudoscience. The checklists are complete nonsense and people are never diagnosed using analysis but rather narrativism. Analysis requires checking, which Psychiatry avoids at all cost. It's not a science; it's purely political.

  3. Intentionally wrong. A good way to cover up psychotronic weapons torture programmes for instance. "Oh it's the schizophrenia" etc. A good way to psych-ward an activist etc. Happens far more often than most people realise. There's NO REASON (except for money and keeping their career) for a psychologist or psychiatrist not to do their reason on military directed energy weapons like "v2k" (voice to skull) technology.

  4. NO!!! He left out all the pharmaceutical interests compiling the DSM-V. All the criticism is from all legit psychologists in prior DSM editions! They were locked out Pharma was MONIED IN!!!

  5. You forgot to mention how i the people who write and produce the DSM are indirectly or directly financially backed by the people who produced the medications to treat the diagnosis, forever widening the breadth and scope the ability to treat you forever growing amount of diagnosis.

  6. This system has killed, cheated, stolen, mistakes should have consequences for anyone involved whether its a so called professional or not

  7. 🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:

    00:29 📚 En los primeros días de la psicología, se basaba en ideas sin evidencia empírica y una definición limitada de enfermedades mentales.
    01:22 📖 En 1918, se creó el "Manual Estadístico para el Uso de Instituciones para los Insanos" con descripciones iniciales de trastornos, como la psicosis maniaco-depresiva y la demencia praecox (bipolar y esquizofrenia).
    03:13 🌍 Durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, se reconoció que los problemas de salud mental, antes conocidos como "shell shock," eran en realidad trastornos mentales, como el trastorno de estrés postraumático (PTSD).
    04:11 🤔 Se utilizó la teoría de Sigmund Freud para comprender cómo los eventos traumáticos podrían causar trastornos mentales.
    05:07 📋 El primer DSM (1952) incluyó pasajes del memorando del Departamento de Guerra y categorizó trastornos en neurosis, psicosis y trastornos de carácter, además de trastornos con causa fisiológica.
    05:36 📝 El DSM ha evolucionado, centrándose en describir y categorizar síntomas, reconociendo que los trastornos pueden tener causas ambientales y sociales, no solo biológicas.

    Made with HARPA AI

  8. This video is extremely outdated. It's well-known that the DSM was horrifically UNSCIENTIFIC by way of a voting system through a small committee in the psychiatric community. Also, "brain chemistry" is an erroneous way to describe any mental disorder as it has ZERO scientific basis in today's mental health lexicon. Please consider removing this video from your channel. Update the information and language if you're going to educate the populous.

  9. It also doesn't help that psychiatry is a pseudoscience piggybacking off psychology and other genuine medical sciences, yet gets all the funding and credit

  10. If you don't like someone, stick a label on them, doxx them, talk smack as truth about them and spread it thru legitimate channels like swatting, and point covens of internet-connected disturbed characters at them, telling them nasty lies about "your" human toy, and encourage them to believe they're being "patriotic" by obsessively covertly attacking your quality of life, until you have none anymore.

    The internet is a tool of and for the devil and its disciples.

  11. 00:03 Early psychologists had a limited view of mental illness
    00:54 Historical lack of standardized definitions for mental illness
    01:43 The DSM's original approach to mental illness was narrow
    02:33 Impact of World War II on understanding mental illness
    03:17 Psychologists realized shell shock might be a mental illness post-WWII
    04:05 The DSM's origin story is intertwined with Sigmund Freud's theories.
    04:50 Early DSM influenced by trauma and combat stress
    05:36 DSM 5 focuses on describing and categorizing symptoms.

  12. Yeah, "zig got almost everything wrong"
    Dont mention the things he got right that we still use to this day tho, shhh

    Love the show, but people are way too harsh to the FATHER OF PSYCHOLOGY

    I wouldnt mind it if it was a more unbiased approach tho
    He got this wrong and that right, but here the "wrong" is highlited more than the "right"

    Have a nice day

  13. For the real history of the DSM watch the talk with Dr. James Davies. It will just engage you how we've all been duped about the DSM, psychiatry, and psych meds.

  14. this video is pretty misleading and incomplete. There are hundreds of great scholarly critiques of the DSM and the fields of Psychiatry and Psychology. These are heavily invested in institutional power and not very interested in the voices of the people they are supposedly "treating" (through force and social control).

  15. Dsm 1 and two mostly talked about reactions that were self limiting dsm 3 reframed to ' disorders' and chronic. You are spreading myths about so called bi polar etc

  16. It's not true that brain chemistry changes are involved. It is a theory that an imbalance in brain chemistry causes some mental illness. There is ZERO evidence to back that theory yet many, including those medically trained, believe it's fact.

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