Is being at risk a disease? Soon perhaps.

I’m writing my letter to the editor about the article “Revising Book on Disorders of the Mind” published in the New York Times. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/health/10psych.html?ref=science). This article talks about the changes that the writers of the 5^th edition of the DSM are proposing to make. My letter specifically deals with the idea of identifying “risk syndromes” in the DSM.

You said “One of the most controversial proposals was to identify ‘risk syndromes,’ that is, a risk of developing a disorder like schizophrenia or dementia.” Although this may change the lives of those who are identified as having a “risk syndrome”, people would argue that the benefit of catching such a disease ahead of time is, overall, more beneficial to the person. Yet how can this be so if “studies of teenagers identified as at high risk of developing psychosis, for instance, find that 70 percent or more in fact do not come down with the disorder.” Labeling a human being as having the risk for something like schizophrenia, given the likelihood of the person actually developing the disease, seems to have a greater disadvantage than benefit. Labeling an individual, in any circumstance, profoundly changes the stigmas and stereotypes that that person becomes associated with. Oftentimes this is unavoidable, but I believe that labeling someone as having a “risk syndrome” has all of the negative consequences of the stigmas associated with the disease without the disease present. Spare a person the humiliation of being labeled an almost “schizo” and label them after they’ve been diagnosed.