Examining lovesickness: DSM vs. Springsteen diagnostics
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders, a.k.a. the “Bible of Psychiatry,” is missing a diagnosis: lovesickness. Then again, music offers insights into this condition that psychiatry never will.
Sometimes it's like someone took a knife baby
Edgy and dull and cut a six-inch valley
Through the middle of my soul
At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet
And a freight train running through the
Middle of my head
Only you can cool my desire.
It's better to let to let medical professionals define lovesickness with code numbers referring to mania, melancholy, obsession, and depression and any others that fit. Those who suffer deserve help. For individuals who just want to know their experience isn't unique and who seek a different kind of understanding, let them dive into a poem or song, or write their own.
Lovesickness can inspire the greatest of art.
Janet Golden's previous posts on sickness and medicine: Bed bugs, hookworks, and mosquitoes: A public health playlist for the blues, and From "TB Blues" to "Bacteria": A musical medical history playbook. And don't forget her cinematic Christmas special: Public health movie stocking stuffers.
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