Insulting Words With a Psychiatric Twist

People have always used insults to describe persons they intensely dislike. But in this era of incivility fueled by social media and the internet, we are seemingly deluged with a flood of insulting remarks. Particularly in this bizarre election season, we've witnessed a “yuge” number of nasty ad hominem comments by and about the personalities of various candidates.

Let’s be honest: You and I have also joined the fray by uttering negative terms about candidates during pleasant (or heated) dining room conversations.

But insults are of course not restricted to the political jungle. In informal discourse among friends, labeling people with insults has been fair game in an atmosphere of bantering. Characterizing the frailties and faults of those we find objectionable may even be seen as “in the spirit of fun."

We use negative words to succinctly describe people during conversations with family and friends, when we indulge in “idle gossip” (which we’ve long been warned against!)

Recently, however, newer words of insult and derision have begun to creep into the common vernacular. In addition to being derogatory these words also have another “edge.”

These newly-designated insults include terms like "narcissistic," "lying," “abuser,” “hyperactive,” “disorganized,” “delusional,” “manic,” “borderline,” psychotic,” “neurotic,” “ADHD,” OCD,” "bipolar,” “autistic,” "criminal," “incompetent,” "paranoid," “retarded,” "co-dependent," "sociopath," “addict” and other such epithets.

These particular words, when used as insults, imply a message of “psychological disturbance.” The words can certainly be used in a kindly fashion, suggesting sympathy for some perceived vulnerability or disability. But in a context of willful derision and insult, they are clearly utilized with an ad hominem connotation, with an added implication of a “psychiatric condition” or “state,” related to a “disorder” or “mental illness.”

These are obviously not common dictionary words of derision, derogatory epithets or swear words of the streets. No, these words are in fact extracted (“lifted”) from the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-5), the current American lexicon (or "bible") of psychiatric diagnoses and disorders.

The DSM-5 has its fair share of critics for a variety of reasons, but it is scrupulous about the avoidance of casting any aspersions on patients diagnosed with disorders. These descriptive adjectives and nouns are utilized solely to provide a rationale for a particular diagnosis. Even then, the diagnosis is dependent on astute evaluation and issues like amount, frequency, severity, and duration of symptoms and signs.

It is disconcerting when these clinical words are bandied about and used in as demeaning insults. Derogatory comments emanating from the loud mouths of some pundits and pols are perhaps to be expected (though not admired), so it is no surprise when these insults make their way into private discourse as well.

It is even more offensive when these remarks are spouted by those who should know a lot better, i.e., mental health professionals. This becomes a problem when some experts are asked to give armchair assessments of people in the news. They sometimes take words out of a clinical context and apply them loosely to the newsmaker (athlete, actor, candidate), occasionally ascribing psychiatric labels or diagnoses to them.

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Asking people to stop depicting others in insulting terms is well nigh impossible, because I’m afraid, “That’s what people do!” But we need to be mindful of the damage that we can inflict when we invoke psychiatric diagnostic terms during our riffs of nastiness.

This is akin to low-life internet “trolling,” where the basest words are meant to inflict maximum pain with minimal thought.

Not only are they demeaning to the person being attacked, these types of verbal assaults are disdainful and painful to those who might be really suffering from any of these disorders.