ReutersLegal posts, "Psychiatrists unveil their long-awaited diagnostic 'bible'," by Sharon Begley. It's an excellent overview of the debate raging over the new publication.
The long-awaited, controversial new
edition of the bible of psychiatry can be characterized by many
numbers: its 947 pages, its $199 price tag, its more than 300
maladies (from "dependent personality disorder" and "voyeuristic
disorder" to "delayed ejaculation," "kleptomania" and
"intermittent explosive disorder"), each limning the potential
woes of being human.
But to the psychiatrist who shepherded the tortuous creation
of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,"
perhaps the single most important number is the "5" in its
title: This is the DSM-5, not the DSM-V.
That may seem like a cosmetic change, but the American
Psychiatric Association, which will release the book on Saturday
at its annual meeting, decided to use Arabic instead of Roman
numerals because "we want it to be a living document," said Dr
David Kupfer of the University of Pittsburgh, the chairman of
the task force that produced the DSM-5. Rather than waiting
another generation to revise the manual - the DSM-IV was
published in 1994 - psychiatrists will regularly update it with,
for example, findings from genetics and neuroscience, labeling
the revisions DSM-5.1 and DSM-5.2 and so on.
"We used '5' because V.0 and V.1 just don't look good," said
Kupfer.
The fact that the world's most powerful psychiatrists (their
decisions determine what counts as a mental disorder, and thus
what insurers cover and which children receive special services
in school) are already building in ways to change the manual is
commendable, even its critics say.
"Lawyers worry new measure of mental retardation could prompt more executions," by Elizabeth Dilts is also from ReutersLegal.
Earlier editions of the DSM defined mental retardation as an
IQ score below 70 accompanied by an inability to meet certain
developmental norms, such as bathing regularly or maintaining
work. Based on that IQ benchmark, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled
in Atkins v. Virginia in 2002 that it is illegal to execute a
mentally handicapped person.
But the editors of DSM-V have dropped the 70 IQ score as an
indicator of mental retardation and instead recommend that
clinicians consider IQ scores while analyzing an individual's
behavior to determine if he or she meets the developmental
standards.
Making the definition of mental retardation more subjective
could prompt more courts to subvert Atkins, said David Dow, a
death penalty lawyer in Houston whose client Marvin Wilson was
executed in Texas last summer despite his IQ score of 61.
"There are a lot of courts that are hostile to the basic
legal doctrine the Atkins case established," Dow said. "When you
replace a test that is one part objective, one part subjective
with a solely subjective test, it becomes easier for courts that
are hostile to the constitutional principle of Atkins to evade
that criterion."
The Sunday New York Times Week in Review published the OpEd, "Why the Fuss Over the D.S.M.-5?" It's by Sally L. Satel, M.D.
LATER this month, the American Psychiatric Association
will unveil the fifth edition of its handbook of diagnoses, the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Fourteen years in
the making, the D.S.M.-5 has been the subject of seemingly endless
discussion.
The charges are familiar: the manual medicalizes garden-variety
distress, leads doctors to prescribe unnecessary medications, serves as a
cash cow for the association, and so forth.
But many critics overlook a surprising fact about the new D.S.M.: how
little attention practicing psychiatrists will give to it.
There are dozens of revisions in the D.S.M. — among them, the elimination of a “bereavement exclusion” from major depressive disorder and the creation of binge eating disorder — but they won’t alter clinical practice much, if at all.
This is because psychiatrists tend to treat according to symptoms.
So why the fuss over D.S.M.-5? Because of the unwarranted clout that its
diagnoses carry with the rest of society: They are the passports to
insurance coverage, the keys to special educational and behavioral
services in school and the tickets to disability benefits.
The New York Times also has news coverage, "Psychiatry’s Guide Is Out of Touch With Science, Experts Say," reported by Pam Belluck and Benedict Carey.
Just weeks before the long-awaited publication of a new edition of the
so-called bible of mental disorders, the federal government’s most
prominent psychiatric expert has said the book suffers from a scientific
“lack of validity.”
The expert, Dr. Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of
Mental Health, said in an interview Monday that his goal was to reshape
the direction of psychiatric research to focus on biology, genetics and neuroscience so that scientists can define disorders by their causes, rather than their symptoms.
While the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or
D.S.M., is the best tool now available for clinicians treating patients
and should not be tossed out, he said, it does not reflect the
complexity of many disorders, and its way of categorizing mental
illnesses should not guide research.
“As long as the research community takes the D.S.M. to be a bible, we’ll
never make progress,” Dr. Insel said, adding, “People think that
everything has to match D.S.M. criteria, but you know what? Biology
never read that book.”
The revision, known as the D.S.M.-5, is the first major reissue since
1994. It has stirred unprecedented questioning from the public, patient
groups and, most fundamentally, senior figures in psychiatry who have
challenged not only decisions about specific diagnoses but the
scientific basis of the entire enterprise. Basic research into the
biology of mental disorders and treatment has stalled, they say,
confounded by the labyrinth of the brain.
"DSM, NIMH on mental illness: both miss relational, historical context of being human," is by Claudia M Gold for the oston Globe Child in Mind blog.
It seems that the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) may have dealt a death blow to the recently published Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM
5) when the organization declared they would no longer fund research
based on the DSM system of diagnosis. The views of NIMH director Thomas
Insel were referenced in the recent New York Times article on the subject.
And:
I am no fan of the DSM system, which reduces complex experience to lists
of symptoms; focusing on the "what" rather than the "why." However,
the NIMH model has limits as well. There seems to be a wish to study
mental illness in the same way we study cancer or diabetes. While I
certainly have great respect for the complexity of the pancreas, or the
process of malignant transformation of cells, trying to understand the
brain/mind in an analogous way seems to be an unnecessary and even
undesirable reduction of human experience.
What is missing from both paradigms is recognition of the relational and historical context of being human.
Earlier coverage of the DSM-5 begins at the link.