NaturalNews— Are your imperfect relationships a disease? Psychiatry thinks so

The ever-expanding list of so-called psychiatric conditions included in the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) may soon include “relational disorders,” or mental illnesses supposedly attributed to two or more people involved in a relationship together.

According to the official definition, relational disorders are “persistent and painful patterns of feelings, behavior, and perceptions involving two or more partners in an important personal relationship.” A married couple, for instance, that continually fights would constitute a relational disorder, as would a troubled parent-child relationship.

If recognized and included in the manual, relational disorders will be the first psychiatric condition that involves more than one person. It will also be the first condition that exists only between two or more people, and not in a single individual.

American Psychiatric Association Protest—This Weekend, Philadelphians Can Say “Screw You” to Normal

This weekend, there’s going to be an Occupy day of protest and rallies in Philadelphia—but not by Occupy Philly. On Saturday, activists will come from all over the country for Occupy the APA, a peaceful day of action to protest the new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), which is being rolled out at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) at the Convention Center. Unlike other protests that sometimes divide the mental health advocacy community, this protest will include people from diverse constituencies—from psychiatrists and those who take medications to psychiatric “survivors” who believe psychiatry is dangerously abusive.

Operator of Psychiatric Counseling Center to pay $6.85 million federal settlement

The operator of a now-shuttered inpatient psychiatric counseling center for boys will pay a $6.85 million federal settlement over allegations of Medicaid fraud, the U.S. Justice Department announced Wednesday.

Keystone Marion Youth Center, owned by the King of Prussia, Penn.-based United Health Services, was at the center of a federal case alleging falsified medical records and that patients were held longer than necessary to bill for more money.

Boston Globe: Finding Alternatives to Potent Sedatives

Marjorie Bontempo was a changed woman after moving into Life Care Center of Nashoba Valley, a Littleton nursing home where the staff doesn’t believe in using antipsychotic drugs simply to calm residents. A physician had prescribed an antipsychotic for Bontempo a year earlier, after Alzheimer’s disease had transformed her from an accomplished seamstress and demure family peacekeeper into a cantankerous, confused woman who refused to eat.

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