The low-down on erectile problems

I NEVER thought I would admit it in public, but I do have something in common with scientologists: a natural scepticism of (thankfully not their often venomous, bordering on violent antipathy towards) the psychiatric profession, and the antics of its members.

It worries me that so many psychiatrists display an obsessive-compulsive need to medicalise perfectly normal human behaviour, to pathologise aspects of it and make it look like mental illness.

Take delayed ejaculation. It is just one example not even the most egregious of this kind of behaviour by 'shrinks'.

Delayed ejaculation has been described as probably the least studied and understood of the male sexual dysfunctions. That much, certainly, is true.

Im not suggesting it isnt a serious problem that can and does aversely affect men and their partners, emotionally, but the incidence of erectile problems is rising (pun unintended) globally, including among young men. Its just nonsense, to my mind, to suggest that most of them are mentally ill. It is far more likely to be a function of increased stress levels, especially as global financial crises dig ever deeper.

The plethora of terms psychiatrists have come up with to describe a delay or absence of male orgasm doesnt help. It must surely be unnerving enough to destabilise the strongest of male egos, never mind the (some might say more common) fragile ones.

Ejaculation in medical literature can be retarded, retrograde, inadequate, inhibited, or athenic; theres also anejaculation (the inability to ejaculate), that can be either idiopathic (a curious term doctors use when they have absolutely no idea of a possible cause), or psychogenic (ditto, for when doctors are stumped about cause and so resort to suggesting it must be 'all in the mind' in other words, psychological rather than physical in origin).

Thats all supported by the so-called 'bible' of psychiatry: the American Psychiatric Associations Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, that was released in its updated form (DSM 5) on May 18 (http://www.bdlive.co.za/life/health/2013/05/17/psychiatrys-latest-bible-a-work-in-progress).

It is said to mark "the end of more than a decades journey in revising the criteria for the diagnosis and classification of mental disorders".

It has been heavily criticised from within the ranks of psychiatric profession itself, for "new disorders and milder versions of old ones that will lead to pathologising normal behaviour".

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The low-down on erectile problems