Couch Curmudgeon
You go into a psychiatrist’s office and tell him you’ve been feeling down most of the time for a couple of years. Your appetite and energy are low and you feel like crap. The psychiatrist, in order to get paid by the insurance company, can’t write that you feel like crap; s/he must give you a diagnosis. You’ll probably be labeled as having “Dysthymia,” which in Greek means bad mood. You tell him/her you’re in a bad mood, and s/he tells you, “You have a bad mood,” except that it is done in Greek. You’re put in the “Dysthymia” pigeonhole.To read the rest of this article, you must log in.