The symptoms of bipolar mania include an inability to stop talking, irritability, a great optimism, a huge output of work, severe problems with impulse control and hypersexual – um – proclivities. Does this sound like a disability? Or does it just sound like a lot of people you know?

The DSM-5’s publication has generated something of a backlash, as professionals and non-professionals – using an internet that wasn’t available when DSM-4 appeared – articulate what everyone has known for yonks: that the DSM is unreliable, unsafe and promotes models of mental health that look positively Orwellian.

When Freud said he could only ever be expected to return someone to the normal state of unhappiness, no-one, it seems, was paying much attention. I know the average person doesn’t read Freud, but whether preferring to avoid this sort of news or be in outright denial, people these days – often at considerable expense […]