It's already on one of the other Axis definations- either Axis II, III, or IV. So no, this is not surprising.

Just remember, it wasn't that long ago they said homosexuality was a mental illness...... and then overturned that.....

This is yet another example of psychiatry attempting to stake claim to any kind of human problem with some basis in behavior. Obesity on the present scale is unique to contemporary culture.Those who are best at storing excess calories into fat would be most likely to survive in a world without a stable food supple. We have taken what could easily be seen as an evolutionary adaption and turned it into a "mental illness". Forget about the few with some medical pathology as cause. That is not at all why most Americans are fat I can assure you. I get requests to see pts for no other reason in the hospital at times. I flatly refuse making it clear that there is no evidence that psychiatrists possess any special knowledge in addressing such an issue. Psychiatry has no shame and its leadership will do anything it can to maintain its political and cultural power. That includes essentially making up an endless lists of imaginary constructs and pretending it offers some expertise in addressing whatever problem it has decided exists. Can it get more pathetic?

Obesity as a mental illness, must be treated with weight neutral Seroquel. Finally the DSM-V is starting to make significant progress.

Now we know the true demons really behind the promotion and causation of mental illness. It's not drug makers and psychiatry; but those evil folks over at McDonald's, Coke, Pepsi, Burger King, etc......

If they did make obesity a mental illness it would make probably over half of America mentally ill - including a lot of doctors, CEOs, politicians etc. It's interesting that the insurance companies don't get more involved in the DSM formulation (not saying they should but since it's already such a questionable resource at this point) as they are the ones that have to pay for the expensive meds and then the hospitalizations that result from bad med reactions. You'd think they'd have a real interest in paying more for nutrition counseling, exercise programs, massage - all of the preventive measures that are so less expensive than overpriced pharmaceuticals and hospitalizations.

Here is another statement about psychiatric medications and weight gain written by Paula Caplan and other doctors [in a newspaper in Canada]
-----------------------------------------
http://www.ssristories.com/show.php?item=3166

Paragraph 7 reads: "In a recent article in the magazine New Scientist, Caplan says new revelations that some antidepressants are virtually no better than a placebo for all but the most severe cases of depression 'make the potential scale of the side effects more worrying than ever'.”

Paragraph 16 reads: "Paxil and other antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, 'have a weird effect. You lose weight at the beginning, and you gain weight after,' Cohen says."

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=a86cb47c-6816-4b8f-96c7-38fde8d27b6d

Psychiatric drugs causing weight gain

The very drugs millions of Canadians are taking to get through their day can cause dramatic weight gain, doctors are warning.

By CanWest News ServiceMarch 31, 2008

The very drugs millions of Canadians are taking to get through their day can cause dramatic weight gain, doctors are warning.

Psychiatric drug-related weight gain “is a huge problem,” says Dr. David Lau, chair of the diabetes and endocrine research group at the University of Calgary and president of Obesity Canada.

“You can see patients gaining 10, 20, 30, 40 pounds,” Lau says.

Peace be with you Philip

It is ironic that story one is on weight gain as a mental illness, and story two is about mental illness drugs causing weight gain.

I still think you are not looking at all the facts. In short the majority of the disorders in the DSM X are targeting poor people. The majority of those forced drugged are poor, and the majority of those selected for drugging are poor. Go talk to the head of Seattle's department of health and human services. Ask for numbers of projected MI among those at 200% or below of the federal poverty level. You'll find that they haven't lost their minds, rather things are proceeding exactly as they planned.

love eternal
tad

Paula Caplan is terrific-- you have probably heard of her book, They Say You're Crazy, which debunks the DSM process. She's also been an activist against psychiatric labels.

That said, if obesity is a mental illness, then that means about 2/3 of Americans are bonkers. Where is the oversight?

There is no money to be made in healthy people, remember?

It's all about profit, all about profit.

There are insurance companies, drug companies, social services, institutions and private hospitals that NEED YOU SICK, to earn the dollar!

Just to be fair, what they might be doing is including obesity in a section similar to DSM-IV's "Other Conditions That May Be a Focus of Clinical Attention." Under that section they have "Medication-Induced Movement Disorders" so they might have "neuroleptic induced obesity" or something to that effect. I don't know what this author's source of information was, and it may be a misunderstanding that, just because it will be in the DSM, that it will automatically be a "mental illness"

I guess this means statins will officially become psychiatric medicines, and liposuction & stomach stabling will become bona fide methods of psychiatric therapy. Lovely.

Is there no end to the madness?

(sarcasm on)
Why only obesity?
Why not consider those who cannot gain weigh even eating, eating and eating?
This is discrimination!
Only obese people?
What about skinny people? They are ugly too and it's amoral and surely a mental disease that causes of such an abnormality.
Seroquel and Paxil for skinny people too because after all they are also son and daughters of the Lord.
(/sarcasm off)

Now we can have an idea why some psychiatrists want to end DSM.

I believe that all human kind should be considered mental ill and take an antidepressant, antipsychotic and a benzodiazepine.
Oh! No! States would have to give free medication... not a good plan.

I'm sure they will find other diseases.

This is amoral, immoral unethical and criminal.
Psychiatry became a police case.
Seriously!
If you are a psychiatrist and remain silent I don't know what to think about you.

I have a friend that gave up being a psychiatrist.
He is working helping people that take street drugs. No! He doesn't prescribe psych-drugs, like Zyprexa, as a medicine to help stop cocaine. Many people are taking Zyprexa and the street-drug at the same time.
He really cares about people.
Of course he is not rich.
Psychiatry has created another addiction.
I'm not anti-psychiatry! I just have experienced and seen enough to trust psychiatrists.
I'm also finding difficult to find a good orthopedist.
Medicine have to rethink it all if it really wants to improve health.
Why do I have the feeling that physicians don't care anymore?
Maybe in the TV series.

Alan Schatzberg, M.D. President of APA sure looks like he can work a few salads into his diet! Under the new DSM, can we diagnose the President of APA as mentally ill???

Interesting. Because I ran into several fat psychiatrists before I wised up and dumped the whole lot of them and their poisons. I've always thought that if someone is fat and it's not because of something medical, then it is likely to indicate a stuffing down of emotion or inner conflict. (And could that many psychiatrists really have thyroid issues? I doubted it.) I figured their weight was a metaphor for what they prescribe for us. They want us to cover up our real selves with drugs because that's what they do themselves and food is their drug of choice.

Well, I guess this means one of the shrinks I saw was severely mentally ill. I was afraid of that.

I have noticed that pharmawhores are not commenting lately.
What are their argument to this and some other issues published lately at FS?
It's getting hard to claim it's scientific.

What is the scientific evidence that obese people are mentally ill?
What is the cause, a chemical imbalance, a bad alignment of planets by the time the person is born (I don't understand why psychiatry do not take astrological data as relevant to diagnose)?
Is the symptom only the fat in the body or are there others?
What is the treatment?
Are drugs enough or must the obese lunatic diet and exercise?
Are there changes in the personality?
Are we dealing with a psychotic or a neurotic disease?
If there is any psychiatrist reading it could you please explain?
Thank you!

re :They want us to cover up our real selves with drugs because that's what they do themselves and food is their drug of choice.

Don't go crazy on judgeing the overeating.
If someone is overweight and suddenly "wakes up", they can commit suicide from the shame of their body.
As Jesus would say let someone without sin throw the first stone. We are all sinners.

Explanation in one word: Meridia. Oh, sorry - the FDA just came out with yet another warning about Meridia. OK - I have just figured out a solution: let's copy and paste that old catch phrase we used for encouraging HRT use in the first few years of menopause, as a guess at how to sell drugs while hopefully ducking the deathly side effects of HRT - that phrasing is working well to encourage pregnant women to take SSRIS -- "Use of this drug should be done in consultation with your doctor, after considering risks and benefits." [this is code for: we recognize that this stuff is bad, but we still want to keep our pharma sponsors fat and happy -- your personal physicain does not have a snowballs' chance of carefully spending time with a bunch of clinical trial and outcomes data to discern the harm data from the jungle of busy statistics and PR spin in those studies, and you know even less that your physician.]

Do psychiatrists get fat because they abuse food or because they're trying some of their own wares? I often thought that I detected a glazed Paxilated look in one psychiatrist's eyes. For sure the one I talk to now does something from the ADHD drugs to keep going.

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/164/5/708

Editorial
Issues for DSM-V: Should Obesity Be Included as a Brain Disorder?
Nora D. Volkow, M.D., and Charles P. O’Brien, M.D., PH.D.

Obesity (body mass index >30), has increased significantly over the past 30 years (approximately 50% per decade) (1), afflicting 32.2% of adults in the United States (2). Obesity increases risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, and other diseases, resulting in annual health care costs conservatively estimated for the United States at $70 to $100 billion a year (3) as well as reductions in life expectancy by 5 to 20 years (4). These facts highlight the urgent need to develop strategies to prevent and treat those afflicted.

Although there have been major scientific advances in the treatment of the medical complications of obesity (i.e., diabetes, hypertension hypercholesterolemia), the morbidity from this disorder is hampered by the failure of interventions to sustain weight loss. Standard interventions based on promoting lifestyle changes to decrease excessive food consumption (dieting) and increased physical activity (exercise) are effective and can normalize weight if followed rigorously, but unfortunately they are incredibly difficult to sustain. The discrepancy between the successes of the metabolic treatments of consequences of obesity and the failures of behavioral treatments to prevent or reverse obesity highlight the fact that this condition is not only a metabolic disorder but also a brain disorder. Consideration of the mental component of obesity should be a key target in the treatment of obesity to facilitate compliance and minimize relapse. Here, we propose that some forms of obesity are driven by an excessive motivational drive for food and should be included as a mental disorder in DSM-V.

DSM-IV recognizes eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia as mental disorders with severe impairments and serious adverse outcomes but does not recognize obesity despite its devastating medical and psychological consequences. Obesity is characterized by compulsive consumption of food and the inability to restrain from eating despite the desire to do so. These symptoms are remarkably parallel to those described in DSM-IV for substance abuse and drug dependence (Table 1), which has led some to suggest that obesity may be considered a "food addiction" (5).

For the rest of the editorial, click the link at the beginning of this comment.

CCHR- A Documentary MAKING A KILLING,
the untold story of Psychotropic Drugging.

This DVD can be order FREE from my website

Psychosomatic Healing
http://www.psychosomatic-healing.co.nz
Handling the stress related to all illness.
With a reduction in Mental and Physical Stress comes an improvement in health.

CCHR- A Documentary MAKING A KILLING,
the untold story of Psychotropic Drugging.

The facts are hard to believe but hard to ignore.
Presented by the Citizen’s Commission on Human Rights
(CCHR).

“The cost to society of this is staggering,
if only in terms of adverse side effects,
increasing hospitalization, premature death,
by people going through life in an altered state”
-Medical Doctor

A tale of deception
Psychotropic drugs. It’s the story of big money—drugs
that fuel a $33 billion psychiatric industry. Without
a single cure. The cost in human terms is even
greater—these drugs now kill an estimated 42,000
people every year. And the death count keeps rising.

Obesity (having a body mass index greater than a certain number) is clearly not a mental illness.

Compulsive overeating, or binge eating, could be a behavioral disorder.

How hard is it to make that distinction? If psychiatrists are listing obesity in general rather than specific behaviors exhibited by a subset of obese people, then they are ridiculous.

Some people do act really crazy with food, eating it in secret or hoarding it. I knew a woman who kept food under her bed and in the cracks of the couch to hide it from her family. She was probably nuts (I doubt psychiatry could have helped her, though.)

Oh, now I get it. Add obesity since we already have anorexia and bulimia. So I assume the treatment is ADs and AA's? You're going to see some REAL obesity then!!

Isn't that video being sold by the poster above made by a group created by the church of Scientology?

The video is a series and FREE on youtube.

Amen Doctor John!

Everyone else makes good points as well.

As someone who has gained 75 pounds since starting Seroquel 3 years ago (all of it gained in the 1st year) I am completely unsympathetic to the idea that weight gain can be viewed as a mental illness. I am certain that once I get off the Seroquel, which I am working on now, I will be able to loose the wieght. There is DEFINATELY a physiologic cause to the weight gain brought on by the medication. And even now at the wieght I am (32BMI) I tend not to worry about it because I see the world for the chaotic pile of crap it has become, and I am more than glad to have an extra few pounds on me just in case humanity, or mother nature, inflicts upon us some sort of apocolyptic scenerio..... Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that the Seroquel, though it has knocked my IQ down quite a few points, still hasn't helped me to be any "happier" and "optimistic" of a person. It just makes me numb.
These psych drugs really suck, and I've tried quite a few. My being "overwieght" really is the least worrysome of the side effects I've endured. Sometimes I am very convinced that the psych meds have given me a harder time than all the street drugs I ever did have.

Kevin,
I will not watch anything done by CCHR because I don't like Scientology and I don't think this is the place to make any propaganda of Scientology because it it put in disbelief the work of all of those who are trying hard to raise awareness.
I believe that "No Science, No Cure" you talked about at the other post is also made by CCHR.
Not here, please, not here.
I don't want to hear:
"You are a scientologist." as an accusation that put my words in discredit.

Yesterday I saw at the BBC that an Australian research claims that fat elderlies live longer than thin.
Maybe they forgot to check if they are crazy.
It's amazing what these researches do: they have the guts to claim the most contradictories theories and I'm sure that another research will prove the opposite: thin elderlies live longer.
This is an exact science.

Also, I think that psychiatrists should have to prove that they have an effective treatment for obesity (one which doesn't involve severe side effects) before they are allowed to list it as a psychiatric disorder in the DSM.

If obesity is listed in the DSM, insurance companies will pay for its treatment, but I highly doubt that psychiatrists will come up with any effective therapy or cure. So, it'll just be society throwing money away.

I can just see psychiatrists marketing molecules similar to speed or cocaine as "dopamine receptor agonists" or some such, and then claiming they've found a cure for obesity -- never mind the side effects.

I was ON seroquel and zyprexa. I followed a very strict diet and had LOTS of exercise because the doc told me when he prescribed them that I "might" gain a "bit" of weight and to read my insert. I gained 60 pounds in a year WITH the heavy exercise and strict diet.

I went off of both and have lost 45 pounds in seven months with a regular diet and normal exercise.

If obesity is caused by anti-psychotic side effects(really known effects) then docs are contributing to obesity and they need to be held accountable.

If pharma makes them knowing the damages they cause yet are saying they are the most effective in managing conditions then they either need to change the product or also be held accountable.

I an afraid over the last thirty years, money, profiting and the like are the total essence of medical practicve today, certainly with psychiatry with all its concommitant corruption. I don't even consider psychiatry any type of field today anyway, except drug dealing and exploiting the mentally ill. I would even gainsay scientology has more ethics within it as an organization, than psychiatry. THe editor of the New England Journal of Medicine MArcia Angell, has written a book, detailing how the drug companies simply lie about their drugs development results. How can anyone run a healthy medical system with these factors. THere is no way any sane medical system can run if ruining people's lives and health is the real result of the actions of psychiatry, drug companies, FDA and the like, when on the other side of the coin money is the only goal. The profession has gone beyond rotten to non existent, and the last thirty years or so in medicine money as the main goal of the professions (not patient care) have brought these insitutions to where they are today. I'm dealing with a serious metabolic condition, hyperglycemia, a permanent medical problem that was created by a doctor, after an accident on risperdal so I get the privelege of everyday reliving these points above in this post.

I noticed the comment above from Meg about why the insurance companies are not more active in DSM formulation and preventative medicine to prevent more costly treatments after there is already a big problem. The comment brought to mind a conversation I had with a British friend. He wondered the same thing Meg did and asked me if American insurance companies are allowed to invest in pharm companies. Does anyone know the answer?

More specific to topic, I'd hate to think that I would get to enjoy the stigma of the qualifier "dual diagnoses" now that the atypical antipsychotic I took for 2 1/2 years (you know, the one that supposedly doesn't make you gain weight) made me gain 110 pounds. Well, technically, it didn't make me gain weight all by itself. It made me crave carb-laden food uncontrollably, even when on an appetite suppressant, and I stuffed carbs nonstop until the professor in my psychopharmacology class casually mentioned the lone paper that acknowledged the drug did this "for a small number of people" and the light bulb appeared above my head. Odd, the carb cravings went away when I stopped the drug. Pity the weight doesn't come off as quickly.