What’s wrong with me? The question of where to draw the line between normal and abnormal and how to label our mental differences has become more vexing than ever. It’s an issue that fuels the continuing debates over Americans’ liberal use of psychiatric medications and the possible overdiagnosis of conditions like Asperger’s syndrome. Now it’s at the heart of an interesting move by the military. As our colleagues over at the Battleland blog reported today, Pentagon officials are trying to remove the disorder from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), arguing that posttraumatic stress is a “normal reaction” to very serious events in soldiers’ lives. As the reasoning goes, if it’s normal, then it should be neither labeled a disorder nor stigmatized: Military mental-health workers constantly try to reduce the stigma associated with mental-health ills, and one way to do that is to not term the problem a disorder. Some veterans agree, but others — fearful the name change is simply a way of minimizing what they’re going through — don’t. “It’s a double-edged sword,” a long-time Army psychiatrist says privately. “We’re trying to reduce the stigma associated with the condition, but it’s in the DSM-4 [the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV), the accepted roster of various mental conditions] as PTSD. And some veterans fear that deleting disorder will jeopardize the VA benefits they get for it.” The question of whether PTSD is a normal response to an abnormal experience runs straight to the crux of the debate. Most studies suggest that at least two-thirds of people exposed to traumatic events do not develop anything like full blown PTSD. So, in a broadly statistical sense, it doesn’t seem to make sense to call it a “normal” response. (More on TIME.com: Why Are Women More Vulnerable to PTSD than Men?) On the other hand, given that a significant minority are affected, one might call the condition a common variant of normal. But the problem with labeling people who experience posttraumatic stress as normal begins when … Continue reading Dropping the ‘Disorder’ from PTSD. What Do Psychiatric Labels Mean?