Is obesity a mental illness?
BY RACHEL GOODCHILD
In the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which will be released in 2013, it appears we may all be a little bit crazy. Which of course I've known for years.
We all have incidences of treading that line between sane and not so sane.
That's normal. It's only when the "not so sane" behaviour becomes the everyday that we begin to wonder if perhaps there could be a bigger issue at hand.
If someone cannot lose weight, cannot get their head around the things they need to do to get there, or know all the right things to do but just can't somehow do it, does this mean it's a brain issue and therefore a mental illness? We accept anorexia and bulimia is, so why not chronic obesity?
Some medical practitioners are fighting to do just that; to see it as a mental illness and then treat it accordingly.
Would this change the way that we treat fatness? Instead of just trying to modify behaviour, would we look at the chemical patterns and see if we could alter these in some way to treat the mental illness?
And should we? I work with teachers of children with aspergers, ADHD, autism, anxiety and ODD (that's Oppositional Defianct Disorder), helping them provide programmes to embrace the child, not the behaviours.
I believe these children have secrets and strengths we often suppress with medical treatments and we don't fully appreciate these strengths. We wipe them out with heavy duty drugs as our first port of call.
What gifts do people with mental illnesses give to us? Those people who struggle with mental illness are often our visionaries, our artists, our creative geniuses. Are fat crazy people here to give us some lessons in something we need to know? Or are they a victim of their own excess.
As someone who has struggled with my weight, I don't want to think that my issues are to do with my brain to be honest. I don't want to have the label of "mentally ill" sitting on top of the extra kilograms I'm carrying. But I do know that my brain and my gut have, at times, felt like they have taken over my nice reasonable decisions of what I should eat or should not eat. Does that make me mentally ill? I'm not so sure.
However would it change the way people would be treated? Fat jokes would become as uncool as jokes about people with depression. Fat people like me would get to go on tv, and tell people like me how to treat their obesity, and how nonfat people should treat us, all paid for by the government.
Do you think that inability to stop eating when your body doesn't need the food anymore means there is a problem? We often say a fat person just doesn't have enough self control. Isn't being able to have control of self one of the requisites for sanity?
I'm still thinking it all over. What do you think?
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Have you ever actually read the DSM manual? It's always good for a laugh to work through it and tote up your own diagnoses.
Problem is the manual was originally designed purely as a tool to make sure that psychiatrists were all talking about the same thing when they said things like 'mania' and schizophrenia' - previously debate between psychiatrists, and patient diagnostic labelling were a bit fraught because of shifting terminology.
The result is pretty much what you would expect - turning all sorts of everyday 'problems' into mental disorders, with a consequent broadening of the field of psychiatry and of opportunities for psychiatrists to make a living.
DSM needs to be read with a large dose of healthy skepticism.
Obesity is not a mental illness that they are working on putting in the DSM-V, it's Binge Eating Disorder (i.e. Bulimia without the drive for thinness and compensatory exercise/laxatives/purging). Saying Obesity is a mental illness, as your heading does, is wrong and not what the DSM-V is looking at. They're also changing some of the criteria for both anorexia and bulimia as they are too narrow and many people aren't eligable for treatment due to missing one or two components of the disorder (i.e. amenorrhea).
Have a look at the requirements of Binge Eating Disorder that is going to be in the DSM-V: http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/Pages/proposedrevision.aspx?rid=372
Obesity is not a mental illness - that's a logical fallacy. The mental illness, Binge Eating Disorder, can cause obesity. The point of putting it in the DSM-V is so that people with BED can access treatment.
Obesity is not a mental illness. It is often a physical symptom of mental illness, such as depression though.
As Mary points out, the DSM is best taken lightly, a useful guide by not a stand-alone diagnostic tool.
NO ITS AN EXCUSE TO BE Overly fat and to eat watever you like, obese people dont help themselves and now its our problem???? explain that cause i dont want anymore of my taxes to be paid towards people that are over weight and cant work that their problemnot the rest of the world!!
My partner is obese, and when we got to the bottom of it, he does have a "mental" disorder. He has a habit for eating when a little bit down. A vicious cycle that unfortunately may make him happy for a short period of time but makes it worse in the long term. Now that he has recognised it and is somewhat conscious of the behavior he is catching it and stopping it.
To be honest I think most of civilisation is affected by mental disorders and we are only just scraping the surface of how much a small disorder can affect someones life (butterfly effect). The more society stops feeling shame in dealing with these issues the better for everyone. For some reason a majority feel the need to kick people while they are down, making the issue a thousand times worse.
I think people need to stop associating mental disorders with being completely insane!
"Are fat crazy people here to give us some lessons in something we need to know? Or are they a victim of their own excess"
Haha nice...
There's a large woman in the cubicle opposite scoffing a big bag of crisps for morning tea. The other day she had half a chocolate cake on her desk to eat. Surely that's mental illness?
What a load of BS. If someone doesn't have the self control to do something (or NOT do something), this is not a mental illness, it's weakness or lazyness.
Fat people are fat simply because they eat too much and don't get enough exersize.
I'm with Sezza #3 and Paul #4 on this one - obesity per se is not a mental illness, but it could be a symptom of one. An obese person would only fall into the category 'mentally ill' if they displayed other relevant symptoms in addition to a high weight.
I don't think that obesity should be classed as a mental illness, but I believe it is a symptom. Some bipolar sufferers shop to excess so why can't they eat to excess?
As a sufferer of depression, I do eat to excess at times but thanks to JK's new website I am starting to exercise more and not binge eat as much. Exercising makes me feel better than eating ever has. It's just a struggle getting to the gym on my bad days, and sometimes the bad days win.
I hate being fat, I hate it with all my heart, I get even more depressed when I get clothes out of wardrobe and they don't fit, I usually go to the gym and push myself way too hard. This is how I feel personally, none of my friends or family look at me that way, they all love me for who and what I am.
If they called obesity a mental illness, it will give people the excuse to not try to get themselves healthy and being healthy is so important, physically and mentally.
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If it is so is alcoholism and smoking and drugs taking. Stop making excuses. What being fat is, is simply lack of self control and the love of sweet or fried foods in 99% of those affected. What the next things that physcologists (they need checking out themselevs) will find as an excuse for human behaviour, lack of discipline and low morals? Check out the news in a week becuas ehtey need something to do!