Will we be giving bigots a pill?

The American Psychiatric Association, which publishes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) periodically updates the classifications for disabling mental disorders, Shanker Vedantum writes in The Washington Post that "Mental health practitioners say they regularly confront extreme forms of racism, homophobia and other prejudice in the course of therapy, and that some patients are disabled by these beliefs. As doctors increasingly weigh the effects of race and culture on mental illness, some are asking whether pathological bias ought to be an official psychiatric diagnosis." One set of proposed guidelines written for discussion by California psychologist Edward Dunbar would classify those people whose functioning is paralyzed by persistent fears and worries about other groups as a form of psychosis.

Not all mental health clinicians agree. "I think it's absurd," commented psychiatrist Sally Satel. She objects that such a classification would allow hate-crime perpetrators to evade responsibility by claiming they suffered from a mental illness. "You could use it as a defense." But Gary Belkin, deputy chief of psychiatry at New York's Bellevue Hospital pointed out that pedophilia is considered a disorder by psychiatrists, but that does not keep child molesters from being prosecuted.

The word psyche is the Greek word for soul, and so with all due respect to the psychologists and psychiatrists, I have some observations as a theologian. The psychiatrists seem treat all mental disorders with medications. Would including bigots in the DSM mean that mental health workers would treat racism, misogyny, and homophobia with talk therapy or would we simply medicate bigots and pretend that the ideational systems and their institutional structures have been solved by treating the designated patients? In traditional theological terminology are the haters of others individual sinners, or are they participating in a culture of sin?

The Prodigal Sheep comments on this move to classify bigotry in the DSM: Maybe medication might make sense for some violent and extremely dysfunctional individuals who consent to treatment. But it also makes me wonder whether the treatment isn't worse than the disease. Pathological bias is a manifestation of a mind and soul not at peace with God and the world. Whether triggered or not by a neurophysiological disorder, it would seem that the most effective treatment for bias is not a prescription, but repentance. We are called by Jesus to turn away from our old thinking, to pour new wine into new wineskins, to love God with all our hearts and our fellow human being as ourselves, to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

It's interesting to observe how society's view of homophobia and homosexuality are following opposite trajectories. Homosexuality has moved from sin to sickness to natural variation. Homophobia has moved in the other direction from acceptance as normal and even healthy, to a sickness. In my view we simply haven't gone far enough. Let's name patholigical hatred for what it is -- sin -- and develop an appropriate spiritual response.