Feeling Bitter? You Could be Mentally Ill

What's worse than having lost our jobs, our homes, our 401(k) in the recession, while the top execs at financial institutions get away with big bonuses straight out of our pockets? How about being told we've got Post Traumatic Embitterment Disorder? American Psychiatric Association (APA) is considering including bitterness in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

clipped from www.psychologytoday.com Bitterness: The Next Mental Disorder? that some psychiatrists are urging it be identified as a mental illness under the name post-traumatic embitterment disorder. But when justified anger at such incompetence is discussed as a sign of mental illness, it is borderline insulting, especially because half the reason for the discussion is to ensure that drug companies—anxious to prod their faltering revenues—can promise relief from the alleged disorder with yet more pharmaceuticals. Imagine, if you will, the inevitable ads: "Think it's just bitterness from job loss, foreclosure on your home, or that nonexistent pension for which you've been saving all your working years? It may be 'post-traumatic embitterment disorder,' a mental illness that some doctors think is due to a chemical imbalance . . ." as usual the APA has ignored or shunted aside most of the explanatory context, to pathologize the individual in all of her or his frustrated grievance.