If irony were a strawberry, we'd all be eating a lot of smoothies right now. The fitfth edition of the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) was released last Friday in an attempt to clear up the increasingly complex field of mental illness, but rather than clear the waters, the DSM may have made them murkier.
The $25 million revision happens only once in a generation and comes after nearly two decades of debate, deliberation and change in clinical practice.
The manual is produced as a diagnostic tool for American psychiatrists, helping them to diagnose and treat their patients, but it is also used by clinicians around the world. In the latest edition (DSM-5), any patient's vague feeling of "offishness" can now be diangnosed, and a drug prescribed to treat it. The new additions of diagnosable mental illness include ‘Oppositional Defiant Disorder’ (when a child repeatedly says ‘No’ and acts defiantly), ‘Major Depressive Disorder’ (the experience of grieving) and Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (temper tantrums).
Richard Bryant, a scientia professor in psychology at the University of New South Wales, highlights how the latest report makes an area of medicine that should be completely unambiguous and devoid of personal interpretation, more confusing.
"In the previous edition, we had 70,000 different ways a disorder could actually present itself," he said. "In the new edition, there's 600,000 ways that the disorder can present."
The DSM panelists responsible for the huge increase in diagnosable illnesses where drugs are the first line of treatment have strong links to the companies who make those drugs. Two-thirds of the mood disorders panel, 83 per cent of the psychotic disorders panel and 100 per cent of the sleep disorders panel disclosed “ties to the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture the medications used to treat these disorders or to companies that service the pharmaceutical industry.”...
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