In a letter published in Newsday
on January 31, 2012, Associate Professor of Psychiatry Michael
Schwartz, MD responded to an opinion piece written the week before by Newsday columnist Daniel Akst suggesting that mental illness is overdiagnosed.
In
his column, titled “Overdiagnosis can make you crazy”, Mr. Akst scoffed
at estimates that 20 percent of American adults suffer some form of
mental illness in any given year. He argued that these figures indicate
that too many people medicalize normal life. He cited as evidence the
growth of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM) over the years and suggested that profit motivates pharmaceutical
companies and mental health providers to promote overdiagnosis.
Describing
Mr. Akst’s article as “irresponsible”, Dr. Schwartz responded that “if
anything, psychiatric diagnoses are underdiagnosed in the general
population”, noting that careful epidemiological studies have found
fairly high rates of mental illness in the general population over
several decades. Mr. Akst need not worry about the overuse of
psychiatric services, Dr. Schwartz said, because of uninformed attitudes
like his and restrictions on access to mental health professionals. The
DSM has grown, he noted, not by adding diseases, but by more carefully
specifying the diagnostic classifications contained in it.
Mr. Akst is a member of the Newsday
editorial board. Dr. Schwartz is Director of Residency Training in the
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Stony Brook
University.
