APA postpones release of revised proposals for draft criteria for DSM-5 by three months

APA postpones release of revised proposals for draft criteria for DSM-5 by three months

Post #64 Shortlink: http://wp.me/pKrrB-Yu

Slip slidin’ away…

There will be no public review of revised draft criteria for DSM-5 categories this coming May.

APA Field Trials got off to a late start and the DSM-5 timeline continues to slip.

Online posting of draft disorders and criteria proposed by the DSM-5 Work Groups for new and existing mental disorders had been scheduled for May-July, this year. Revised criteria were expected to be posted online in May, for a period of approximately one month to allow the public to review proposals and submit comment.

But according to a revised Timeline on the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) DSM-5 Development site, this second public review exercise is now postponed until August-September 2011:

“August-September 2011: Online Posting of Revised Criteria. Following the internal review, revised draft diagnostic criteria will be posted online for approximately one month to allow the public to provide feedback. This site will be closed for feedback by midnight on September 30, 2011.”

There are also references within the DSM-5 Timeline to ICD-10-CM and the forthcoming ICD-10-CM Partial Code Freeze, and to ICD-11.

ICD-11 Beta Draft

According to sources, ICD-11 Revision Steering Group are still working towards having a Beta Draft ready for May 2011.

But from a PowerPoint presentation posted briefly on the ICD-11 Revision website at the end of February, but swiftly removed following enquiries, evidently the WHO has been discussing the pros and cons of postponing the release of its own Beta Draft for public input until the autumn, or until the end of 2011, or possibly even May 2012.

Another ICD Revision document: ICD Revision Project Plan v 2.1, projects a date of May 2012 for release of the Beta Draft. Since there is no definitive and recent ICD-11 timeline on any of the WHO’s ICD Revision sites, and since ICD Revision is keeping schtum, it remains unclear at what point in the timeline a Beta Draft for ICD-11 will be released for public scrutiny and input (as opposed to purely internal use, as the Alpha Draft had been). I will update when more information becomes available.

The original dissemination date for ICD-11 had been 2012, with the timelines for the revision of ICD-10 and DSM-IV running more or less in parallel. But in 2007/8, the release date for ICD-11 was shifted to pilot implementation in 2014 and dissemination in 2015. A “pre-final draft” of ICD-11 is projected for March 2013 with submission for WHA endorsement in May 2014. ICD Revision are balancing “incomplete software, unsatisfactory content and incomplete review process” against reduced opportunity for public input and reduced public confidence, if the timeline for the Beta were to be extended.

In December 2009, the APA announced that the publication date for their DSM-5 was being extended to May 2013.

In January 2010, APA President, Alan F Schatzburg, MD, said:

“…the extension will permit better linking of DSM-5 to the U.S. implementation of the ICD-10-CM codes for all Medicare/Medicaid claims reporting, which are scheduled to go into effect on October 1, 2013. APA will also continue to work with the World Health Organization (WHO) to harmonize DSM-5 with the mental and behavioral disorders section of ICD-11, which WHO plans to release no sooner than 2014.”

With a Partial Code Freeze looming this October for ICD-10-CM, the delays in starting field trials and now a three month postponement of publication of revised criteria for the second public review and comment period isn’t going to inspire confidence in a Task Force that has already come in for significant criticism of its oversight of the revision of DSM-IV.

Revised and expanded DSM-5 Timeline

[Timeline superceded by revised Timeline]

Ed: Footnotes: The “harmonization” of DSM-5 and ICD-11

The APA participates with the WHO in the “International Advisory Group for the Revision of ICD-10 Mental and Behavioural Disorders” (Chapter 5) and a “DSM-ICD Harmonization Coordination Group”.

There is already a degree of correspondence between DSM-IV and Chapter V of ICD-10. For the next editions, the APA and the WHO have committed as far as possible:

“To facilitate the achievement of the highest possible extent of uniformity and harmonization between ICD-11 mental and behavioural disorders and DSM-V disorders and their diagnostic criteria.”

with the objective that

“The WHO and APA should make all attempts to ensure that in their core versions, the category names, glossary descriptions and criteria are identical for ICD and DSM.”

But the WHO acknowledges there may be areas where congruency between the two systems may not be achievable.

As the iCAT (the ICD-11 electronic collaborative drafting platform) stood last November, two new categories were listed in the Linearized Chapter 5, F45 – F48.0 (Somatoform Disorders) codes. It is understood from ICD documentation (DIFF File – Changes from ICD-10 [MS Excel doc. Retrieved 29.09.10; no longer available on 01.10.10]) that child categories F45.40 and F45.41 are new entities for ICD-11 [1].

Note the ICD-11 categories between F45 – F48.0, as they stood in the iCAT drafting platform last November, do not mirror current proposals of the DSM-5 “Somatic Symptom Disorder” Work Group for renaming the “Somatoform Disorders” categories of DSM-IV to “Somatic Symptom Disorders” and combining a number of existing categories under a new rubric, “Complex Somatic Symptom Disorder (CSSD)”, and the more recently proposed “Simple Somatic Symptom Disorder (SSSD)” [2][3].

[1] Screenshot iCAT, ICD-11: Chapter 5: F45 – F48.0: https://dxrevisionwatch.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/2icatchapter5f45somatoform.png  

[2] Article: Erasing the interface between psychiatry and medicine (DSM-5), Chapman S, 13 February 2011: http://wp.me/pKrrB-Vn

[3] Article: Revisions to DSM-5 proposals on 14.01.11: New category proposed “Simple Somatic Symptom Disorder, Chapman S, 16 January 2011: http://wp.me/pKrrB-St  

[4] DSM-5 Development website: http://www.dsm5.org/about/Pages/Timeline.aspx