NEW PSYCHIATRIC MANUAL SOON TO BE RELEASED

Children who throw too many tantrums could be diagnosed with ''temper dysregulation with dysphoria''. Teenagers who are particularly eccentric might be candidates for treatment for ''psychosis risk syndrome''. People who are far too interested in sex face being labelled as suffering from ''hyper sexual disorder''.

These are among dozens of proposals unveiled by the American Psychiatric Association in the first complete revision since 1994 of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or ''DSM'' - the massive tome that has served as the bible for modern psychiatry for more than half a century.




The proposals will be debated in an intense process over the next two years, with potentially billions of dollars at stake for pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, government health plans, doctors, researchers and advocacy groups.

''By massively pathologizing people under these categories, you tend to put them on an automatic path to medication, even if they are experiencing normal distress,'' said Jerome Wakefield, a professor of social work and psychiatry at New York University.

''Risk syndromes'' have been proposed in the hope that early diagnosis and treatment will stave off the full-blown conditions. But Robert Spitzer, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, was concerned adolescents who were merely ''a little odd'' would be labelled ''pre-psychotic''.

This is another ruse to get money from the American public. The Scientologists believe that many people now on these psycotrophic do not need them. It is just a big business for insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies..