History of Psychiatry for Dummies
Step 1: "Operationally define" any clustering of behaviors and/or thought patterns that "the State" deems unacceptable or potentially a threat to the collective "common good" and/or to the State's power. Then medically ordain these "abnormal" behaviors/thoughts and call them "symptoms" of mental illness.
Step 2: Observe and quantify the relative frequency and/or strength of each of these symptoms of "mental illness" from individuals in selected population(s) via subjective observation by a licensed, trained, certified, and/or accredited authority figure (e.g. doctor, social worker, police, teacher).
Step 3: Plot all the data out for a given population in what is called a "normal probability plot", which is a graphical technique used to identify substantive departures from "normality."
Step 4: Get together with other researchers at conferences and make collective decisions thru consensus about 1) the clustering of symptoms and 2) the specific percentile deviation from the mean that is considered "abnormal" (an "outlier"). Then publish the finished results of these conferences in what are called "Diagnostic Statistical Manuals" which outline the various specific symptom "clusters" as specific mental "disorders."
Step 5: Develop and test psychoactive drugs in large controlled clinical trials to determine safety and efficacy in reducing the occurrence and/or severity of the "abnormal" symptoms of the particular "mental illness" that you have created.
Obviously, some "mental illnesses" really do appear to have a reliable biological underpinning, long historical recognition, and are hereditary in nature. For example, schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder. However, the problem is that in the zeal to make large profits by big pharma, the whole field of Psychiatry has been severely corrupted and compromised to where people who are just going through normal stressful life events* are being conned into thinking they have a life long mental disorder because s/he was told so by someone wearing a white coat with degrees handing on their wall (while a drug rep waits out in the lobby to reward the doc for his/her month prescript quota with front row seats to Dave Matthews concert). Its become a fucking joke.
(*without the traditional spiritual and cultural guidance we once relied on to get thru them)