by Sheila M. Rothman

About the author: Sheila M. Rothman is a senior research scholar at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University.

In recent years, the types of behavior that are labeled as diseases have increased dramatically. Modern psychiatry is ready to treat not only acute depression and schizophrenia, but also moodiness, anxiety and poor self-esteem, feelings most of us have experienced at one time or another.

Nowhere is this development clearer than in editions of the psychiatrists’ desk manual, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM. Published by the American Psychiatric Association, the first edition, which came out in 1952, listed 60 categories, including schizophrenia, paranoia and other aberrant forms of behavior. By contrast, the fourth edition or DSM-IV, which came out in 1994, has more than 350 listings (by my count...