DSM-5 Round up: March #1
March 19, 2013
DSM-5 Round up: March #1
Post #229 Shortlink: http://wp.me/pKrrB-2H2
New York Times
Letter to the Editor
RONALD PIES
Lexington, Mass., March 18, 2013
The writer is a professor of psychiatry at SUNY Upstate Medical University and Tufts University.
Letter
Invitation to a Dialogue: Psychiatric Diagnoses
Published: March 19, 2013
Macleans Canada
Normal behaviour, or mental illness?
Temper tantrum, or ‘disruptive mood dysregulation disorder’? A look at the new psychiatric guidelines that are pitting doctors against doctors
Anne Kingston | Tuesday, March 19, 2013
…Under the new “somatic symptom disorder” (SSD), for instance, people who express any anxiety about physical symptoms could also be saddled with a mental illness diagnosis, which could thwart their attempts to have their physical issues taken seriously. To meet the definition one only needs to report a single bodily symptom that’s distressing and/or disruptive to daily life and have just one of the following three reactions for at least six months: “ ‘disproportionate’ thoughts about the seriousness of their symptom(s); a high level of anxiety about their health; devoting excessive time and energy to symptoms or health concerns.”
Psychology Today
Side Effects
Christopher Lane
Why DSM-5 Concerns European Psychiatrists
A guest contributor from Paris explains why the manual’s power is misplaced
Published on March 18, 2013 by Christopher Lane, Ph.D. in Side Effects
Last September, in a post called “Anti-DSM Sentiment Rises in France,” I reported on the arguments and concerns of Stop DSM, a group based in Paris comprising (among others) prominent psychiatrists and psychoanalysts disturbed by the power of the American Psychiatric Association and its “one-track” focus on biological psychiatry. Today, I am pleased to include the thoughts of Patrick Landman, a psychiatrist and associated researcher at the Université de Paris VII, who voices his own concerns about the likely effects of DSM-5, including on diagnostic and prescription rates across Europe. In excerpts from a longer essay he explains why the WHO should distance itself from DSM-5, how the manual has changed European psychiatry for the worse, and why practitioners around the world should boycott the edition. An impressive list of U.S. media reports on DSM-5 follows, itself indicating how closely Europeans are following the publication.–CL
CNN
Are we over-diagnosing mental illness?
Katti Gray, Special to CNN | March 16, 2013 — Updated 1304 GMT (2104 HKT)
…Frances led the task force that produced the DSM IV in 2000. “What motivates me is the experience of having inadvertently contributed to fads and psycho-diagnosis that have resulted in over-diagnosis and over-treatment,” Frances said. “Some of this happened during DSM IV, even though we were more conservative with that document than they’ve been with DSM-5, with its many changes that are unsupported and, in some cases, quite reckless.”
For example, Frances said DSM-5 would mislabel one in four people with chronic [widespread] pain and irritable bowel syndrome with the DSM-5’s newly created “somatic symptom disorder,” which is diagnosed when a person has spent at least six months steadily thinking of and being anxious about their medical illness…
Psychiatric News (organ of the APA)
Psychiatric News | March 15, 2013
Volume 48 Number 6 page 1-30
10.1176/appi.pn.2013.3b26
American Psychiatric Association
March 15, 2013
Members Vote Paul Summergrad, M.D., APA’s Next President-Elect
Association News
APA members have decided that Paul Summergrad, M.D., chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine, is the leader they want to help guide the Association through a time of turbulence and change in the nation’s health care landscape in general and psychiatric practice in particular…
New York Times
Opinion
Lawrie Edwards | March 16, 2013
TO the list of differences between men and women, we can add one more: the drug-dose gender gap…
Psychology Today
A wave of opposition is building against the new edition of psychiatry’s bible.
Published on March 15, 2013 by Edward Shorter, Ph.D. in How Everyone Became Depressed
dx revision watch 