<checks calendar> Wait, this isn't April 1st!

Seriously, happiness is a psychiatric disorder? Rare, sure, but a disorder? That's the craziest thing I've heard since... well, since the Iran war, I guess, so not very long. Still, that's nuts. I cannot imagine the world view that it must take to look at happiness that way.

Ahh 1992. At the time he probably didn’t know he needed to add a /s or he’d be taken seriously in our delusional future.

Woosh

Reminded of that episode of House where the lady with dormant syphillis had something like this.

I wonder are there any ways I can contract this without breaking marital vows

I'm assuming this is some kind of jab at the general propensity of psychiatry to classify most things as disorders, rather than a serious proposal. If anything, I think the problem has gotten worse since this was published. (Then again, maybe happiness has also gotten more rare since 1992?)

it's Catch-22. the world is such a mess that if you're happy, you must be delusional.

I really liked this paper. I think it's less of an outright joke that it's possible to squint your eyes and laugh that happiness could be a disorder, and more of shining a light on the psychopathological system that tends towards over-diagnosis and hyperfixation on those diagnoses.

"If our so-called scientific system were really objective and honest, it would include happiness as a disorder." I think this is the goal the paper is trying to expose, more than just making a joke about mapping a good feeling to a description of a bad feeling. Indeed, I think the last line of the paper gives it away - our current system is very incomplete and needs to be extended:

> Indeed, only a psychopathology that openly declares the relevance of values to classification could persist in excluding happiness from the psychiatric disorders.

Reminds me of https://thenewinquiry.com/book-of-lamentations/ edit: A review of the DSM as if it where a dystopian novel basically, makes some interesting observations/points

This reminds me of this old gem from The Onion:

FDA Approves Depressant Drug For The Annoyingly Cheerful [video/NSFW/2:06] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd4tugPM83c

Ha, this is fun. But there's a kernel of truth to it. The problem with American culture specifically is that it treats "happiness" as a goal, rather than a fleeting feeling that is probably better described with a more specific word (joy, accomplishment, excitement, satisfaction, contentment). Our culture leans on this so hard that people start to think there's something wrong with them if they're not feeling generalized happiness most of the time.

That's just not how life works.

I need some advice on etiquette. Is the correct answer to

  "Good morning!"

still

  "That's what the government wants you to believe."

or is it now

  "You want me to contract a psychiatric disorder? What did I ever do to you?"

Good news is that the government can offer free treatment.

The critique feels valid to me. There’s a tendency in modern psychology/media to pathologize the average human baseline: if you’re not consistently optimistic and thriving, something must be wrong with you, or at least you need to be in a pursuit of this.

But constant happiness isn’t realistic, it’s like a desire to be permanently high. From my own experience I’ve landed somewhere near the Buddhist framing: the healthy default is just calm and neutral, with happiness and sadness coming and going away.

Trying to force happiness as a permanent state seems like its own problem, which is kind of what Bentall is pointing at from the other direction.