2020 Articles
The Overdiagnosis of Bipolar Disorder Within Marginalized Communities: A Call to Action
This paper argues that the overdiagnosis of bipolar disorder (BD) is an urgent and underrecognized problem within the U.S., threatening to expose vulnerable Americans to heightened stigma and harmful drug effects while disguising the environmental and traumagenic roots of their distress. The paper traces BD overdiagnosis to biomedical assumptions about mental illness and to the decline of social welfare policies over the past twenty-five years. It calls on policymakers to address BD overdiagnosis by revising criteria in the DSM 5, developing psychosocial models of mental illness, and reintroducing protective social welfare programs. Finally, the paper urges social workers to educate themselves about the harms of BD overdiagnosis as well as to recognize their own role in medicalizing their clients’ distress.
Files
- Doyen_2021_The Overdiagnosis of Bipolar Disorder Within Marginalized Communities.pdf application/pdf 134 KB Download File
Also Published In
- Title
- Columbia Social Work Review
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.52214/cswr.v19i1.7388
More About This Work
- Published Here
- August 29, 2022
Notes
Mental health stigma, Social welfare policy, Post-traumatic stress disorder, Bipolar II, DSM5, trauma, bipolar spectrum disorder