How Society Invents Syndroms
Subject
The Invention of "Insufficient Milk Syndrom"
Even when women do decide to breast-feed, they sometimes feel they are thwarted by their own bodies. "Insufficient milk" is cited as a major reason women in the West terminate breast-feeding after a few days or weeks. The syndrome is fascinating because it is a clear example of a disease being "invented," defined, and then perpetuated by culture at large. In only about 5 percent of the cases is there something…
Similarity
Object
Social Norms and Psychological Disorders
Before 1980, this would have seemed a strange question. Social anxiety disorder did not officially exist until it appeared in that year’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the DSM-III, the psychiatrist’s bible of mental disorders, under the name “social phobia.” It was not widely known until the 1990s, when pharmaceutical companies received F.D.A. approval to treat social anxiety with S.S.R.I.’s and poured tens of…
Why they relate
As cultural norms change, medical science creates new disorders with which to diagnose people. Two examples given here are "Insufficient Milk Syndrom" in mothers during the invention of bottle-feeding and "Social Anxiety Disorder" in an age when extroversion is valued.