Are the patients or the psychiatrists mental?

Some are wondering if it is the patients or the psychiatrists who are crazy now that the latest mental disorder has been revealed: orthorexia nervosa, meaning “healthy eating disorder.” It’s making the internet rounds, coming to a blog, Facebook post, or Youtube video near you.

Do you avoid processed foods and take vitamins? You might be crazy!

Joking aside, there certainly can be serious disorders related to eating. However, this one seems to border on the absurd, and has been mocked all over the web. Some commentators even say it’s a politically motivated attack on health conscious consumers, who just won’t go along and buy all their mass-produced food from heavily subsided multi-national corporations. Others say it’s laying the groundwork for government regulation and taxation of vitamins and supplements.

This latest mental disorder has been officially classified in the U.K., not in the United States’ infamous DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which has been the subject of heated debate among doctors and psychiatrists since it was first published in 1952.

To pick only one of numerous examples, here’s a book by two California university professors presenting the case that “the DSM applies the language of mental illness to everyday behavior, transforming ordinary reactions to life’s vicissitudes into billable pathology.”

It seems safe to say that “healthy eating disorder” is yet another example of political correctness run amok. Hopefully, it won’t come across the pond to the U.S. Keep on endeavoring to eat healthy. You aren’t crazy.