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The person who taught my abnormal psych course (not quite professor at the time, but very nearly at that point) said that in order to qualify to be diagnosed with any mental disorder, one must meet the qualifications laid out in the DSM and it must materially and negatively impact your life.

We're all paranoid, narcissistic, phobic, etc. to one extent or another, but it's only if it's a problem that you should be diagnosed.

News reports, being written as they are by non-psychologists and people who have not taken this class, tend to miss this.

(I'm not a psychologist either, but I feel pretty comfortable with sharing this information; it's pretty basic stuff.)



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