Most of the mental health professionals who decide what is included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders have ties and/or have been funded by large pharma. There's one clue. There isn't a pill for MLC.
I sniffed around a little bit and found that to be included in the DSM the following criteria must be met: - symptoms severe enough to cause impairment or distress - sufficiently different from categories of illness already included - demonstration that the new diagnosis will not generate false positives - absence of political sensitivity
So when it comes to the behaviors attached to MLC, yes the symptoms cause impairment or distress, but is it really different from other potential diagnoses like depression or panic attacks or anything that includes abandonment and irresponsibility? The likelihood of false positives is HUGE, and political sensitivity, I would think, fairly high (interpretation as "an excuse for people to leave their marriage and families" would have many activist groups up in arms, and rightly so).
I think there's a lot of growing up and personality integration that should happen in the late teens and twenties, even into the early thirties. People figure out who they are, go through changes in style and interests and figure out what fits, what they're really into (throughout that time I'd been a hippy, a punk, outdoorsy, etc, and now I'm just me, with various parts integrated). They make bad choices, change jobs and majors, skin their knees, break hearts, suffer heart break, screw up. At the end of the early adulthood learning and growing experience, folks are ready for the responsibilities of marriage and family should they choose it.
BUT sometimes folk get married young and miss that whole growing experience. Or sometimes they're under the thumb of watchful "helicopter" parents and aren't allowed to make mistakes or learn and grow. They're burdened with expectations that come from their immediate or extended families, their social groups, their culture, their community, their religion.
So they walk the path that somebody else has laid out for them and BOOM! One day that whole part of the psyche that hasn't had a chance to develop and integrate pops its head out and there it is. "I deserve to blah blah blah ME ME ME".
That's just how I see things as a person who's been on her own since 19 and was married to someone who seemed to try to "rebel" but couldn't really get out from under mommy's thumb.
So while I do think that MLC is real in the sense that something developmental happens and is incredibly destructive, I don't really think MLC is a legitimate mental illness.
Instead, I think it's a cluster of behaviors that mimic diagnosable mental illnesses. It is the product of never having had a real chance to go out and sow those wild oats, to spread those wings, to explore various sides of one's self and allow them to fully integrate at an age and socially appropriate time in one's life. It's immaturity in so far as these people never had/took a chance to fully mature, to ripen so to speak.
Should they get a pass because they're on "a journey"? Absolutely not.
How does this relate to DB efforts? As with young adults, sometimes you just gotta cut those apron strings and let the kid grow up and fend for him/herself. The sooner the better. Enforce the responsibilities and take absolutely no sh!t.
Of course, others might disagree.....
me 45 H 46 T 5 M 2.5 BD Sept 6 2011 OW Sept 8 2011 Threw him out Sept 8 2011
