DL_Frances - Laurent to the crisis of DSM 3/9
For Frances, DSM diagnostic inflation has to do with the context, not the text. It is then to see how they are applying the DSM, not the DSM itself. One example: after the appearance of DSM-IV in 1997, the US government authorizes direct advertising of psychotropic drugs. The marketing is directed from that time, doctors and consumers. metaphors as "chemical imbalance" and the medicalization of disease goes by the logic of FMCG are invented. A no limit is set so that parents' associations also want access to diagnostics to benefit from appropriate services: no diagnosis, no access to services.
Since then, they have created four major epidemics of mental disorders: bipolar disorder, autism and attention deficit disorder in children, bipolar disorder in adults.
For Laurent, it is not only Big Pharma that have led to this crisis. Also, although not finished Frances accept dissenting voices have emerged among researchers of the same DSM. Frances intends to solve this internal crisis with a new regulation, a new bureaucracy that allows joining the European centralized systems with a legal regulation of American cut.
Frances also sees another effect is that of globalization: the difference is not allowed, and it tends to medicalized as if it were the only way to be treated. And wonder why it is proposed as the only solution.
Laurent find the reasons for the movement of civilization Foucault perceived in what he called the birth of biopolitics where population management replaces the clinical project. But also, in this crisis, other voices have been raised as the Demazeux and Hacking epistemologists. We leave it for the next post.