DA LI JE ODREĐENJE DUŠEVNOG POREMEĆAJA VRIJEDNOSNO NEUTRALNO
IS THERE SUCH A THING AS A VALUE NEUTRAL DEFINITION OF MENTAL DISORDER?

Summary/Abstract: The author discusses the circumstances under which happiness might be classified as a mental disorder. His deliberation has been inspired by the paper entitled “A proposal to classsify happiness as a psychiatric disorder” by Richard Bentall, published in ‘Journal of Medical Ethics’ in 1992. Bentall contends that the only valid argument to exclude happiness from future classifications of mental disorders is to be found in the fact that happiness has been positively valued. By his account, value judgments should not determine our approach to psychiatric classification. In constrast to Bentall, Kecmanovic openly declares the relevance of values to classification. He argues that values play and will be playing a significant part in insanity ascription. Thus he analyses the extent to which crietria of (ir)rationality, (un)intelligibility and (in)tolerance of a specific (verbal and/or non-verbal) behavior influence both the laymen’s and psychiatrists’ jugments about whether a behavior might be or actually is the expression of mental disorder. All these criteria have not been included in DSM-IV because the authors of this classificatory and diagnostic system were driven by the idea to design a value-free diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. The fact is, however, that to date no socially positively valued way of behaving, thinking and feeling has raised any suspicion that its protagonist might suffer from any kind of mental disorder. The same holds valid for happiness. It will stay out of classification of mental disorders so long as it is looked at as a desirable, very much sought-after condition.

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