From St. Thomas Aquinas

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The number of people in America suffering from mental disorders will grow by leaps and bounds thanks to one of the proposed changes in a new draft book of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) publishes this book – its bible of psychiatry – that classifies people into various buckets of mental illness disorder categories. The APA is adding “binge eating” as a new mental disorder category.

Gasp! Where will we fit all these new people suffering from the mental disorder of binge eating? There aren’t enough psychiatrists and psychologists in the country to treat them. Should binge eating psychiatrists and psychologists be barred from treating binge eating patients? The questions that arise in thinking this through are never-ending.

Experts from the APA state there’s now enough evidence to call binge eating a mental disorder. Binge eating is defined as eating large amounts of food when you’re not hungry and then feeling disgusted and depressed afterwards. Sounds like the binge eating behavior of many of the people who got together to watch the Super Bowl on television last Sunday.

According to one psychiatrist, there’s no consensus as to what is the best treatment for someone afflicted with a binge eating mental disorder. He added, however, that several types of medications appear helpful. I’m sure that comment is pleasant music to the ears of the pharmaceutical industry.

Well I’ve got some news for these psychiatrists responsible for updating their psychiatry bible. They are a day late and a dollar short with this one. It’s not called binge eating but rather gluttony. Gluttony is gulping down or swallowing – as in over-indulgence and over-consumption – of food, drink or intoxicants to the point of waste. In some Christian denominations, it is considered one of the seven deadly sins.

St. Thomas Aquinas, the immensely influential philosopher and Catholic theologian, classified the six ways in which gluttony is committed:

Praepropere – eating too soon

Laute – eating too expensively

Nimis – eating too much

Ardenter – eating too eagerly

Studiose – eating too daintily

Forente – eating wildly

I’m not anxiously waiting for this new psychiatric bible to hit the bookstands to help me determine if I suffer from this mental disorder because better answers are available from St. Thomas Aquinas.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum