“Psychiatry’s Bible: The DSM is doing more harm than good.”

This was the headline of a guest opinion piece printed in yesterday’s Washington Post. The editorial was written by psychologist Paula J. Caplan who argued that “hundreds of people  [are being] arbitrarily slapped with a psychiatric label and are struggling because of it.”  As an example, Caplan recounted the story of a “young mother” who had been told after a quick assessment by an emergency room doctor that she had bipolar disorder. The woman was committed to a psychiatric ward and started on dangerous psychiatric medication.

  Over the next 10 months, the woman lost her friends, who attributed her normal mood changes to her alleged disorder. Her self-confidence plummeted; her marriage fell apart. She moved halfway across the country to find a place where, on her dwindling savings, she and her son could afford to live. But she was isolated and unhappy. Because of the drug she took for only six weeks, she now, more than three years later, has an eye condition that could destroy her vision.

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We need better laws and  improved mental health services.

Mike Wallace and I didn’t start off as friends.

The great CBS newsman, who died Saturday at age 93, telephoned me when I was writing my first book, Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Jr. Spy Ring.  It was 1986 and Wallace had learned that I was the only reporter who had gotten John Walker Jr. to talk to me.

At the time, Walker hated the media and didn’t want to talk to anyone about the 18 years that he had spent spying for the Soviets or how he had recruited his son, Michael; his brother, Arthur; and his best friend, Jerry Whitworth, as traitors.

For those of you who haven’t read my book or might not remember the case, John Walker Jr.’s arrest in 1985 was the biggest spy scandal in the U.S. history since Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted and executed in 1953.

Walker’s treachery stunned the nation and Mike Wallace was eager to get the first television interview with him.

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Buzz and Elaine Blackett’s son, David, ended his own life on February 27, 2011, when he was a student at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. Buzz spoke about his son’s suicide in an emotional tribute during a reception held last week on the campus before I gave a lecture later that night.

Buzz recalled how David had been diagnosed with a mental illness in his teens, how he had kept it secret from his classmates, and how he had desperately wanted to be “normal.”  While in college, David decided to stop taking his medication and soon spiraled into a depression that proved fatal.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students and the main trigger is untreated depression.

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“Our son was taking his medicine when, all of the sudden, he started showing signs that he was slipping and becoming ill again. My first thought was: ‘He’s stopped taking his medication.’ That’s what his psychiatrist thought too. But it was something else entirely.”

This email from a concerned mother is one of several that I’ve received about a problem that may impact individuals who have been diagnosed with a mental disorder and take anti-psychotic medication.

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