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HomeHealthCeteraPaula Caplan PhD “How are decisions made about who is normal?”

Paula Caplan PhD “How are decisions made about who is normal?”

Barbara Glickstein is co-director of CHMP and co-producer/host of Healthstyles.

Tune in Thursday, January 25 at 11:00 PM to Healthstyles  wbai.org 99.5FM Pacifica Radio

How are decisions made about who is normal?

Barbara Glickstein interviews Paula J. Caplan, Ph.D., a clinical and research psychologist; Fellow, Women and Public Policy Program, Kennedy School, and the Director of the Voices of Diversity Study based at the DuBois Institute at Harvard; author of 12 books, including When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home: How All of Us Can Help Veterans and They Say You’re Crazy: How the World’s Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who’s Normal; and a playwright, actor, and director. She writes a blog for Psychology Today. Her websites are whenjohnnyandjanecomemarching, psychdiagnosis, and paulajcaplan.

Dr. Caplan is part of a growing movement of clinicians calling for Congressional hearings and a boycott of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5 is now in preparation) because she stated,” that psychiatric diagnosis is not grounded in good science and causes a vast array of harm to people who have turned for alleviation of their suffering to those who are called helping professionals.”

when-johnny-jane-come-marching-home-againMost recently, she has driven this point home with her impassioned work to address the current needs of returning soldiers and veterans. The diagnoses and treatment plans are not working. She is advocating for resources so that they can heal emotionally without using psychiatric labels or psychiatric drugs but for more access to nonpathologizing, low-risk approaches to war trauma. Her latest book addresses this issue, When Johnnie and Jane Come Marching Home: What All of Us Can Help Veterans. 

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  • I would propose another point of view on the DSM-5 issue, that of parents of young people who benefited by the expansion of the definition of the diagnoses for severe mental illness to include “attenuated psychosis” and thereby were able to head off the progression to schizophrenia. This DSM-5 debate is steamrolling itself into a black and white meds vs. no meds false dichotomy. I am also a blogger on PsychologyToday.com who has a response to the anti-revision contingent articulated in this blog post, I offer for your review….http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/awakening-psyche/201111/who-controls-treatment-early-psychosis-the-dsm-5-battle-and-your-teenag

  • Psychiatristis aren’t bad people and they get slammed more than they should. That said there is a lot of wisdom found in The blog written by a mother of severely-autistic son with self-injury titled (google it): “DSM-5 Autistic Spectrum Disorder Disaster” is mandatory reading for DSM-5 committee.

  • See “Self-injurious behavior in Autism Spectrum Disorder” Self injury behavior is something DSM-5 has yet to acknowledge is common among autistics of all functioning levels. Failing to research self injurious behaviors in the spectrum is not helping autism community.