We pathologise normal behaviour

The psychiatric practice of classifying normal behaviour, giving it scientific-sounding labels and re-categorising it as a condition has been covered in the press. This included a statement from the Prof Simon Wessely, the new president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

He said: “It’s psychiatry which is against the medicalisation of normality.”

That was news to me. Psychiatrists manufacture the labels and redefine normal. Prof Wessely said “…ADHD and other conditions were real disorders, for which drugs did work.” When you put the two statements together, there is a fundamental contradiction.