“The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illnesses is the latest edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) professional reference book on mental health and brain-related conditions. Also known as DSM-5-TR, this is the main guide for US mental health providers. The latest version, DSM-5-TR was published in 2022.”
The DSM-5-TR is Big Pharma’s official guide for mental health illnesses, syndromes, diagnoses, and treatment protocols across the West, not just in the US. All mental health providers, institutions, organisations, and corporate entities must follow the DSM-5-TR diagnostic criteria and treatment protocols.
It’s their “bible,” and any mental health providers deviating from this “bible” may face penalties from Big Pharma’s mental health councils, boards, and professional bodies.
Unlike empirical scientific evidence used to diagnose physical illnesses, the DSM classifies thoughts, feelings, emotions, and behaviours – subjective human reactions – as “symptoms of mental illnesses”. For example, the main symptom of depression is an inability to enjoy pleasurable activities (Anhedonia). However, anyone with basic knowledge of how dopamine affects the brain knows that a dopamine malfunction is the “neurobiological symptom,” causing this inability. Yet, a dopamine malfunction is not listed among the DSM symptoms of depression.
The building blocks of dopamine are magnesium and tyrosine, while the building block of serotonin is tryptophan. Serotonin keeps us mentally balanced, and dopamine motivates us to seek pleasure. Our body produces tyrosine and tryptophan from the food we eat but doesn’t produce magnesium; this must be obtained through diet or supplements. You won’t find required levels of magnesium, tyrosine, or tryptophan in the DSM treatments for depression.
The DSM originated in the 1840s when the US government started collecting data on mental illnesses. At that time, the term “idiocy/insanity” was a category in that year’s census. In subsequent years, more mental illness categories were added, and 40 years later, the census included seven additional categories: mania – part of bipolar disorder today; melancholia – called major depressive disorder today; monomania – obsolete; peresis – still called peresis; dementia – still dementia today; dipsomania – called alcohol addiction today; and epilepsy – still epilepsy today. From 1880 to 2025 – 145 years later -, these conditions remain uncured, while Big Pharma’s wealth has rapidly increased. How wealthy would it be if we eradicated depression with healthy food and magnesium supplements?
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) published the first edition of the DSM in 1952, increasing the number of mental illness classifications to 106. It gathered symptoms of “idiocy/insanity” and other mental illnesses and categorised them into subtypes for census takers and administrative purposes at mental institutions.
Later, it dictated diagnostic and treatment protocols without obtaining informed consent. In the 1980s, when Big Pharma introduced SSRIs, psychiatry added hundreds of new “mental illnesses” caused by thousands of random behaviours and emotions, labelled “symptoms,” which still lack detectable scientific evidence today.
Psychiatry’s DSM achievement so far is an unscientific list based on thoughts, feelings, and emotions – subjective opinions – symptoms of mental illnesses, leading to non-pathobiological diagnoses and treatments of unscientific mental illnesses. What makes this subjective “tick-list” dangerous is the reliance of psychiatric institutions, organisations, governments, mental health providers, medical insurers, hospitals, doctors, nurses, human resources, Western justice systems, pharmaceutical companies, and educational institutions, that wrongly assume all humans are emotionally and behaviourally identical – a one-size-fits-all approach that is neither true nor feasible.
The APA has earned over $100 million in profits from the DSM, placing it among the most financially lucrative books since the 1950s. We assume the DSM is scientifically reliable and validated, and that the “elites” writing it are ethical, honourable, and moral individuals.
The DSM-5 was written by task forces consisting of mental health clinicians, academics, and researchers chosen by the APA. However, nearly 70% reported financial ties to pharmaceutical companies, and 56% admitted to owning pharmaceutical stocks and serving on their boards.
These conflicts of interest can generate millions of dollars in profits for these task-force members, mental health providers, pharmacies, pharmaceutical companies, and medical device manufacturers, whenever new mental illnesses are added to the DSM or symptoms are relaxed or expanded: as when psychiatrist Allen Frances, the chair of the DSM-IV task force, publicly admitted he regretted his role in creating “false epidemics” of ADHD and autism when he allowed their definitions to be broadened in the DSM-IV.
The uncomfortable truth in psychiatry is that biological, chemical, genetic, and physiological markers for diagnosing and treating depression and all other mental illnesses are nonexistent. All diagnoses depend solely on subjective “opinions,” and whether mental illnesses are included or excluded from psychiatry’s “bible” depends on votes from the same conflicted task-force members profiting from their pharmaceutical and APA ties.
Burnout is not included in the DSM-5-TR because it didn’t receive enough votes in 2022; however, specific emotional experiences demanded by lobbyists have been classified as mental illnesses because a DSM designation can lead to health insurance reimbursements, increased school funding, school- or work-related accommodations, unemployment benefits, and disability rights.
Since 1980, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and its DSM task forces have argued that standards for reliability in medicine are too high for psychiatry. As clarified in the American Journal of Psychiatry, in 2012, psychiatric diagnoses are generally so unreliable that reaching reliability levels acceptable in other medical fields is considered “miraculous” in psychiatry. Diagnoses have low reliability and lack validity. According to the US National Institute of Mental Health, the “lack of DSM validity is the main reason why the US government ceased funding research relying on DSM categories”.
Big Pharma’s psychiatry still has no idea what causes depression, but it continues profiting from 38 years of SSRIs, developed to cure depression. If the cause of the brain-body malfunction remains unknown, how can SSRIs cure it? What are SSRIs doing to the brain?
The message from the American Psychiatric Association, DSM task forces, and the US National Institute of Mental Health is that their “bible’s” psychiatric diagnoses cannot be trusted. Fortunately, we have alternatives.
