Have you noticed how a new mental diagnosis seems to appear every week? Once upon a time some children were naughty, now they have conduct disorder. Some people just weren’t very nice, but now we diagnose them as having a personality disorder. Perhaps everything we do is odd.
In a gentle parody of psychiatric diagnosis, Richard Bentall (1992) proposed that happiness should be classed as a mental disorder and referred to under the new name of major affective disorder, pleasant type. In his article he suggested that the relevant literature shows that happiness is statistically abnormal, is made up of a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities, and probably reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system. He considered the possible objection that happiness is not thought badly of, but dismissed it as scientifically irrelevant.
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