Mental illness as a social construct is further supported by the addition and deletion of mental illness categories within the DSM-5. Diagnoses such as homosexuality, narcissistic personality disorder, hysteria and schizoid have been deleted while cannabis withdrawal and hoarding disorder have been added to the DSM-5. Asperger’s Syndrome has been blended into Autism Spectrum Disorder which leads to a question of the validity of diagnoses that lack specificity of symptoms. A mental health diagnosis and label can change a person’s identity and encourages the use of pharmacological interventions that have both side effects and unknown long-term ramifications. While this benefits the Big Pharma industry, it does not always benefit the person. . It changes people's identities, it encourages the use of drugs whose side effects and long-term effects are unknown, and main effects are poorly understood. Reflection …show more content…
Bias in both diagnoses and research needs to be looked at regarding borderline personality disorder. In Foucault’s (1980) work, he examined the relation between the power of governments to intrude in people’s lives and how institutions such as the medical community devise a framework and then execute and impose these discourses. These are subject to manipulation by those in power such as the identification of homosexuality, borderline personality disorder and hysteria as psychiatric illnesses that are used to control a portion of the population and reinforce a particular bias. Bereska (2011) suggests the “DSM is just as much a political document as a medical document” (p.