Should Joy Be a Disorder? A 1992 Psychiatric Proposal

In 1992, psychologist Richard Bentall proposed classifying happiness as a psychiatric disorder—'major affective disorder, pleasant type'—arguing its rarity, a discrete symptom cluster, cognitive biases (overestimating control, unreal self-evaluations), and possible CNS dysfunction, with critics noting happiness’s lack of negative valence, which Bentall deemed scientifically irrelevant.