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To ease the heartache of her first child's stillbirth, Kelli Montgomery chose rigorous exercise, yoga and meditation over the antidepressants and sleeping pills that her physicians immediately suggested.

"'You need to be on this medication or that medication.' It was shocking to me that that was the first line of defense," said Montgomery, 42, director of the MISS Foundation for Grieving Families in Austin, Texas. "From the time I was in the hospital to when I was seeing my general practitioner, that's what they were insisting on."

Her choice stemmed partly from a longtime aversion to taking prescription drugs. It was also the result of listening to a growing group of psychiatrists, psychologists and clinical social workers from around the world who argue that depression and other normal responses to life's toughest challenges are too often labeled as disorders -- and as such, demand medicine with sometimes dangerous side effects.

Protesters such as Montgomery contend diagnoses of serious psychological and psychiatric disorders have also needlessly skyrocketed alongside the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders' expanding list of what constitutes mental illness. The manual is considered the bible of psychiatry because it's the criteria mental health professionals use to diagnose patients.

One example of the issue is the frequency of bipolar disorder in children. It has jumped 40-fold in the last two decades, said Dr. Bernard Carroll, a former Duke University psychiatry department chairman.

"You've got all these young kids running around with this diagnosis, yet many of them have never, ever had a manic episode, which is the hallmark of bipolar disorder," said Carroll, now the scientific director of the Pacific Behavioral Research Foundation.

"Many of these kids," he continued, "have never had anything other than irritability. Yet they're exposed to anti-convulsants, anti-psychotic drugs, which have serious long-term side effects in the form of obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes and some movement disorders ... that can leave a person extremely disfigured physically."

The International DSM-5 Response Committee -- named after the upcoming fifth incarnation of that diagnostic manual -- plans to launch a campaign next month aimed at blocking the manual's May 20 release. Short of that, critics plan to press ahead with their case that the DSM-5 should be viewed with some skepticism and not wholly embraced by practitioners or patients.

"We believe that there is now overwhelming evidence that DSM-5 is scientifically unsound (and) statistically unreliable," said clinical psychologist Peter Kinderman, director of the University of Liverpool's Institute of Psychology, Health and Society. He is helping organize the international campaign with petition drives in the United States, the United Kingdom and France.

The American Psychiatric Association, whose manual has been used by health insurers, pharmaceutical companies, doctors and other clinicians since it first published in 1952, has dismissed DSM-5 opponents as overly alarmed.

"All the good epidemiological studies unfortunately show that one in five people have a psychological disorder. ... They're prevalent, they're just all over the place, and that's very disturbing to some people," said Dr. Carl Bell, a Chicago psychiatrist and University of Illinois School of Medicine director of public health and community psychiatry. More at http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/16/health/mental-illness-overdiagnosis/inde
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