Psychiatric Fads Lead to Overdiagnosis

Fads punctuate what has become a basic background of overdiagnosis. Normality is an endangered species.

The NIMH estimates that, in any given year, twenty five percent of the population (that's almost sixty million people) has a diagnosable mental disorder. A prospective study found that, by age thirty two, fifty percent of the general population had qualified for an anxiety disorder, forty percent for a depression, and thirty percent for alcohol abuse or dependence.

In this brave new world of psychiatric overdiagnosis, will anyone get through life without a mental disorder?