So I’m listening to “This American Life” and they make mention of some upcoming revisions to the DSM that bring to surface a question I had a long time ago that never got answered.
Apparently, the DSM is going to officially strike reference of the term “mental retardation,” the argument being that it’s an offensive term, in favor of “intellectual disability.” Now, I’m hoping some of you psych people out there on my friends list chime in on this because I’m really confused.
Retard (v.) means to suppress, or slow progress and development. On its own the word doesn’t really provide insight into degree or severity, but it does by definition hint at some sort of scale. Disability, on the other hand, is a very discrete term. It’s binary. Something, or someone, is abled or disabled. There’s no grey there. In terms of mental aptitude and ability, then, it seems to me like the offensiveness in these terms is flipped. It seems more proper and less harmful to use the term that gauges across a scale. Peoples’ cognitive abilities are graded, it’s not like a brain is just on or off.
So is this just a case of societal trends and evolved connotations totally running contrary to literal meanings? Shouldn’t the DSM be striving to maintain a clinical perspective on these things, or am I just thinking too much about random stuff I hear on This American Life?
By the way, the rest of this particular episode of This American Life is really incredible, and if you haven’t already you should check it out.
Being rather neurotic and a tad obsessive/compulsive, I’ve managed in my lifetime to amass quite a few quirks. Some of these quirks are rather obvious and I’m helpless to hide them from people, like my penchant for only getting one haircut a year when it starts to warm up. Others are pretty discrete and most people would never notice them, like my conscious decision in 2007 to being always type “ok” instead of “okay” because I hated the way the Y looked in most common instant messenger fonts. The latter was a decision arrived at despite several days of inner turmoil regarding the fact that Microsoft Office red squiggles the two-letter spelling.
Whether subtle or radical, however, one thing remains the same: the sheer ridiculousness of the rituals I find myself committing to for absolutely no rational reason whatsoever. In the spirit of humbling myself through public self-deprecation, I’ve decided to list a small sample of my idiosyncrasies.
- I make it a point to use the word “idiosyncrasy” at least once a week. I haven’t missed a week in about a year and a half. I sometimes plan for this days ahead of time in anticipation of specific conversations which I know I can sway in the direction of a satisfying usage.
- If I’m in bed and I wake up with a digital clock in view, I will challenge myself to arithmetically manipulate the digits into a result of 8 (my favorite number… because it’s infinity turned sideways) before I get up.
- I once was told that I used the acronym “LOL” too much and so I resolved to only ever use the word “hehe” during typed expressions of humorous appreciation. This lasted for several years until someone told me I typed “hehe” too much, at which point I decided to alternate usages of “LOL” and “hehe” across conversations. I’ve kept this up for about a year now.
- It took me over a year and a half to find a pair of sweatpants that fit my exacting criteria in all of five separate categories which I had identified and documented in an Excel spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was archived in a special folder of similar decision making aides until I successfully made a purchase.
- I’ve been known to lose my friends at malls when I absent-mindedly stay behind to organize messy store shelves.