Disease Mongering
HSDD
Now what, in the name of all that’s holy, is this? Something to do with ADHD perhaps, which, as you will naturally be aware, means “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder”. Wait a minute, there seems to be at least one superfluous word in there somewhere, isn’t that so my children?
Ah, yes, it’s the “deficit disorder”. Now, surely, if there is a deficit of something, that characterises it sufficiently; there doesn’t need to be a disorder as well.
Back to the mysterious HSDD. This means – I am not making it up – ‘hypoactive sexual desire disorder’. Perhaps it would be clearer what it means, if it means anything at all, if the name of this illness were more simply put, such as ‘reduced sexual desire’. But I suppose it wouldn’t sound quite so ‘scientific’ if they didn’t use some Greek prefix like hyper- (above) or hypo- (under), and then if you call something a disorder that really makes one sit up and take notice!
Anyway, from what deep wisdom comes this? You can imagine the boffins and the professors, burning the midnight oil doing their experiments, huddling over their flasks of strong coffee, their charts, their flow diagrams, their shelves groaning under the weight of the learned tomes they frequently consult – or perhaps these days it is all accessible at a few keystrokes via the Internet – as they wrack their brains to make sense of a newly discovered disease.
Well, actually, it does come from a learned tome, the 1994 production of the American Psychiatric Association called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition, usually abbreviated (there we go again) to DSM IV. And how does the DSM IV define HSDD? The essential features are a “deficiency or absence of sexual fantasies and desire for sexual activity” that causes “marked distress”. But in case you get too carried away finding new cases of this epidemic under the bed (or should I say in the bed?) the Manual adds that “the diagnosis must rely on clinical judgment based on the individual’s characteristics, the interpersonal determinants, the life context and cultural setting.” Well, dearie me, interpersonal determinants, and all those other qualifications somewhat confound the definition, don’t you think? And, by the way, how do you distinguish just ordinary distress from the marked variety?
It seems to me this is another attempt at medicalising a normal human condition – like shyness, which I kid you not is called by the DSM IV boffins ‘social anxiety disorder’ – as if attaching a fancy sounding label explains a complex human situation where all sorts of personal and cultural influences come into play.
Perhaps DSM should stand for Disease and Symptom Mongering.
Gabriel Symonds©