She Criticizes the DSM

I am reading An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness - that I recommend highly.

The DSM has had many critics, from within the psychiatric community itself - but hers is especially poignant.

In the last section of the book she argues that manic-depressive is a better label for her illness than bipolar. As she says: No patient or family member is well served by elegant and expressive language if it is also imprecise and subjective.

What on earth is she talking about? I quote from her again:

Oddly enough, it had never occurred to me not to have children simply because I had manic-depressive illness. Even in my blackest depressions, I never regretted having been born. It is true that I had wanted to die, but that is peculiarly different from regretting having been born.

Overwhelmingly, I was enormously glad to have been born, grateful for life, and I couldn’t imagine not wanting to pass on life to someone else. All things considered, I had had a marvelous—albeit turbulent and occasionally awful—existence. Of course, I had had serious concerns: How could one not?

Would I, for example, be able to take care of my children properly? What would happen to them if I got severely depressed? Much more frightening still, what would happen to them if I got manic, if my judgment became impaired, if I became violent or uncontrollable? How would it be to have to watch my own children struggle with depression, hopelessness, despair, or insanity if they themselves became ill?

Would I watch them too hawkishly for symptoms or mistake their normal reactions to life as signs of illness? All of these were things I had thought about a thousand times, but never, not once, had I questioned having children.