Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health
Health & Fitness:Mental Health
In March 2022, a new grief-related disorder was officially adopted into mainstream mental health diagnosis nomenclature. Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD) is a recent addition to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual fifth edition text revision (DSM-5-TR). A PGD diagnosis is to be used when a person is grieving too long and too intensely.
In this interview, Kaori Wada, Psychologist, grief researcher, and Associate Professor and Director of Training at the University of Calgary, builds upon her recent paper on the Medicalization of Grief in conversation with MIA Science News Writer and Psychologist Zenobia Morrill. Wada articulates a history of institutional tensions and financial conflicts behind the creation of this new PGD diagnosis. She also discusses the ways PGD could shape how we collectively understand and respond to those grieving.
Wada’s work demonstrates that the creation of PGD was not based on scientific findings but appears to be entangled in long-standing arguments between camps of mental health professionals with different stakes in whether the diagnosis became legitimized. Further, PGD, as with other diagnoses, represents elements of mainstream psychological theory that tend to render deviations from Western cultural norms as “unhealthy.” Is diagnosis needed to provide support and care? If so, those most likely to experience marginalization, violence, and unjust loss are also most likely to be classified as having PGD, a mental illness.
At a time when the world is fraught with tragic loss—owing to causes ranging from political failures, state violence, and the COVID-19 pandemic—grieving has been transformed into a mental health disorder. But the complicated question of what a mental disorder is continues to be glossed over. The opportunity for psychiatric professionals to embrace humility seems to have reverted to the familiar “diagnose-and-treat” response. Will pharmacological intervention become the dominant “treat” response to a diagnosis of PGD?
A new grief disorder is a clear departure, however, from the way grief used to be described in the field as an example of something that is clearly not a mental health disorder, Wada shared. She exclaims: “To me, the medicalization of grief is controversial because it may fundamentally shake up the concept of a mental disorder, [how it has] been defined and understood.”
Wada and Morrill explore what this new PGD diagnosis may mean, reflecting on the ways the “diagnose-and-treat” logic seems to of experiences formerly considered part of the territory of being human. The need to pathologize experiences in order to address them represents a paradox. A new ethical and moral quandary befalls professionals tasked with determining when grief is an illness and when expressions of grief are inappropriate.
Will the public embrace this new disorder? Will the medicalization of grief be resisted? Will a pandemic of PGD diagnoses follow a global pandemic? Wada speaks to the personal and professional influences that shaped these curiosities and her approach to researching how grief is being construed in the mental health field.
Can Psychosocial Disability Decolonize Mental Health? A Conversation with Luis Arroyo and Justin Karter
Sarah Fay - Cured: A Memoir
Sharon Lambert and Naoise Ó Caoilte - Mental Health Podcasts: A Force for Good in a Contested Field
James Greenblatt - 'We Have a Neck' - The Links Between Body and Brain
Nandita Chaudhary - Challenging Western-Centric Child Psychology
Mia Berrin - Embodying Emotional Taboos: Musicians and Mental Health
David Edward Walker - Oppressive Mental Health Practices - For Native People, the Past is Present
Chris Bullard - The Sound Mind Festival
Chris van Tulleken - Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn't Food and Why Can't We Stop?
David Carmichael - The Antidepressant Safety Tour
Tanya Frank - Zig Zag Boy: My Family's Struggles With Broken Mental Healthcare
Pata Suyemoto - Centering Racial Justice and Community in Mental Health Advocacy and Suicide Prevention
Camille Robcis - Uncovering Radical Psychiatry and Institutional Psychotherapy in Postwar France
Erick Turner - Making a Silk Purse Out of a Sow's Ear: How Publication Bias Threatens Research Integrity and Public Health
Adam Urato - Chemicals Have Consequences: Antidepressants and Pregnancy
Owen Whooley - Psychiatry's Cycle of Ignorance and Reinvention
Project LETS: Building Peer-Led Mental Health Alternatives on Campus
A Revolution Wobbles: Will Norway’s "Medication-Free” Hospital Survive?
Ten Years of Rocking the Boat - Reflecting on Mad in America's Mission and Work
Changing Narratives - Reflecting on Mad in America's Mission and Work
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Good Mood Revolution
Mental Health Insights
MQ Open Mind
Speaking of Suicide
The Suicide Prevention Movement
Depression Talks Podcast