Back off Shrink.. I'm filled with the Ghost!

I know many of you are sick of hearing me rant on ad nauseam about my medical psychology class, to you I apologize, but today's hypocrisy has me shaking my head and in a 'ranty' mood.

We are covering 'somatoform disorders' - these ailments deal with the (not completely understood) relationship between the mind and body and how problems in the former lead to symptoms of the latter. During today's lecture we covered a particularly interesting one called Conversion Disorder. This particular diagnosis is 'pseudoneurological' and basically is the physical manifestation of neurological symptoms due to some psychiatric cause. For example: I accidentally walk in on my grandparents having sex and from that point on I am blind. Enter the dreaded DSM IV.

To diagnose this curious ailment a series of criteria have to be met. The most important is to make sure there isn't an underlying medical condition- in my example you would have to rule out retinopathy for instance as one possible cause of my blindness. So far it makes sense.

Here is where the psychiatrists lose me. Criterion D. states that the symptom cannot be explained by: medical condition, substance, or culturally sanctioned behavior or experience. Huh? What?? So if you are paying attention: YOU ARE NOT CRAZY IF EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT! I guess this means that Jim Jones and his kooky Kool-Aid crew were not nuts since all of them 'sanctioned' each other's idiocy. Once again the ridiculousness of psychiatry rears its ugly head by allowing "diagnosis by democracy".

As an attempt to explain the caveat of "culturally sanctioned behavior" our professor brought up the oft seen phenomenon of the 'speaking in tongues' or sudden epileptic-like spasms that the faithful have during some of the more 'animated' church services. Pardon the pun but has Psychiatry lost its mind?

Apparently we abandon all scientific reasoning here and allow for the 'holy spirit' to account for wild gesticulating , frothing at the mouth, shaking, and shouting unintelligible utterances, flailing about on the ground, passing out and temporary paralysis that some of these people experience. No shit?( if by some chance an atheist is in a church and behaves thusly how do we code that in the DSM? just a thought)

If someone displayed this behavior in a mall for instance, it would be looked at as abnormal to say the least. But if the same manifestations occur during a church ceremony (where it is culturally sanctioned) it is "normal". Hmm?

I don't want to make this about religious experience or the validity of certain beliefs but if we are to set some sort of scientific standard here when it comes to medicine, and psychiatry in particular, then it baffles me how we don't label this type of behavior with the same scrutiny just because it occurs during a religious service. This seems to be an unabashed attempt to be politically correct and not offend the devout by labeling them with the same diagnosis that we would place on anyone else exhibiting those same behaviors without the 'holy ghost' causing them. Hypocrisy abounds.