APA closes third and final comment period: fails to publish field trial results

June 16, 2012 by

APA closes third and final comment period: fails to publish field trial results

Post #184 Shortlink: http://wp.me/pKrrB-2gs

So that’s it.

The third and final review of draft proposals for DSM-5 categories and criteria wrapped up last night.

APA closed the DSM-5 Development site for feedback around midnight without publishing its promised report on the DSM-5 field trial results.

Stakeholders have been obliged to submit feedback without the benefit of scrutinizing reliability data or any other information about the field trials APA had intended/may still intend/does not intend publishing.

James H. Scully, Jr., M.D., American Psychiatric Association CEO and Medical Director, blogs at Huffington Post.

I’ve asked Dr Scully why the report has been withheld; whether the Task Force still intends to publish field trial data and when that report might be anticipated.

If APA is so confidence about its field trial results, why the reluctance to place this data in the public domain?

In his Huff Po commentary of May 31, Dr Scully claimed:

“…DSM-5, unlike DSM-IV, invited comments from the world, and the work groups and task force considered every one of the more than 25,000 comments received and conducted further research where indicated.”

Following the first posting of draft proposals, out on review for ten weeks in spring 2010, APA reported receiving around 8,600 submissions; for the second review, around 2,120. I’m curious about this figure of “25,000 comments.”

I’ve asked Dr Scully, will he account for that figure of a total of 25,000 comments so far? I’ll update if Dr Scully responds.

According to Task Force Vice-Chair, Darrel Regier, M.D., the specific diagnostic categories that received the most comments during the second public review and feedback exercise had been the sexual and gender identity disorders, followed closely by somatic symptom disorders and anxiety disorders.

Following closure of the two previous public reviews, APA issued statements and articles. I will update with any statements that are released.

 

What now?

Content on the DSM-5 Development site (proposals for changes to categories, criteria, rationales, severity specifiers etc) is now frozen.

The site will not be updated to reflect any revisions and edits made between June 15 and submission of final texts, later this year, for approval by APA Board of Trustees.

The remainder of the development process is set out on the Home Page under “Next Steps” and in the APA Board Materials Packet – December 10-11, 2011. This document sets out the DSM-5 Development program from December 2011 until May 2013:

Open here: Item 11.A – DSM Task Force Report

According to APA’s newly published and highly restrictive DSM-5 Permissions Policy – following closure of this third and final public review and comment period, content of DSM-5 will be under strict embargo until the manual is published.

Final text is expected to be presented to APPI, the APA’s publishing arm, by December 31 for May 2013 publication.

I shall continue to update this site with any developments and with media coverage and commentary.

 

DSM-5 Round up

At DSM 5 in Distress, Allen Frances challenges “APA Newspeak”:

DSM5 in Distress
The DSM’s impact on mental health practice and research.

Top 10 Indicators Of DSM-5 Openness
Challenging APA newspeak.

Allen Frances, M.D. | June 15, 2012

In ‘1984’, George Orwell introduced the term ‘Newspeak’ – the abuse of language by totalitarian bureaucracies to create an upside down, looking glass world of misinformation. He was probably inspired by ‘Pravda,’ the Soviet Union’s propaganda paper that literally means ‘truth’ in Russian but was famous for publishing everything but.

This brings us to the American Psychiatric Association. Its medical director recently justified the astounding $25 million APA has already spent on DSM 5 (5 times the cost of DSM IV) with a curious claim- DSM 5 was so exorbitantly expensive because it was so unprecedentedly open. This classic Newspeak kills two truth birds with one stone — DSM 5 didn’t waste a huge amount of money and DSM 5 didn’t fail because it was a closed shop. The futile hope is that black will become white if only you say it enough times.

In fact, it is very cheap to run an open process — and very expensive to run a PR disinformation campaign. It cost me nothing but an hour’s time to write this blog. How much, I wonder, will it cost APA to pay off GYMR (its high powered public relations producer of newspeak pravda) to defend its indefensible claims that DSM 5 is an open process and that it can meet its unrealistic timetable with a reliable manual?

Here is a top 10 list of great moments in the history of APA ‘openness’.

1) APA forces work group members to sign confidentiality agreements to protect DSM 5 ‘intellectual property’.

2) DSM 5 does a confidential and super-secret ‘scientific’ review of itself- real science is never secret.

3) APA rebuffs calls from 51 mental health associations for an open and independent scientific review.

4) APA’s legal office tries to stifle criticism and censor the internet using inappropriate and bullying threats of trademark litigation.

5) APA plans to steeply jack up licensing costs for use of DSM criteria sets in order to recoup its unaccountably huge investment on its ‘intellectual property’.

6) DSM 5 only reluctantly engages on the issues and instead stonewalls criticism with offensive and defensive tactics.

7) The original DSM 5 plan for field trials included no prior public viewing of criteria sets and no period for public comment. These are added only under heavy outside pressure.

8) DSM 5 publishes no aggregations of key areas of concern identified during public reviews; doesn’t respond publicly to them and there is no indication that public input has had any impact whatever on DSM 5.

9) The APA ‘charitable’ foundation (meant to provide open public education) is named by a watchdog group as the 7th worst charity in all of the US.

10) APA promises to post a complete set of DSM 5 reliability data in time to allow comments during the final period of public review- but fails to do so.

And this is just a taster. At least a dozen reporters have spontaneously mentioned to me that never in their careers have they encountered anything so byzantine as the APA press office. And dozens of APA members have emailed their frustration at not being able to get a straight (or any) answer from a staff whose salaries are paid by their membership dues.

It requires lots of time, money, and brain power to create ‘pravda.’ Perhaps this explains why everything connected with DSM 5 is always so late and so expensive and why a high flying hired gun like GYMR is needed to run its interference. The real truth is fast, cheap, and very simple to explain.

Additional research is available at Suzy Chapman’s website. She monitors DSM-5 development at https://dxrevisionwatch.wordpress.com

 

On June 13, the American Counseling Association, representing 50,000 US counselors, published its submission to DSM-5:

ACA provides final comments on the DSM-5

ACA President Don W. Locke has sent the American Psychiatric Association a letter providing final comments for the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Based on comments from ACA members and the ACA DSM Task Force, the letter acknowledges useful changes that had been made to previous drafts of the DSM-5: the development of the Cultural Formulation Outline, reversing the pathologizing of normal bereavement, and limiting the expansion of personality disorder types. ACA also calls for addressing the one-dimensional nature of the new Substance Use Disorder category and rejects the proposed dimensional assessments. Click here to view letter.

This is the third letter ACA has sent to the American Psychiatric Association providing feedback for the DSM-5. Click the links below to read the previous letters and a response from APA:

 
 
 

The DSM-5 Open Letter Committee of the Society for Humanistic Psychology, Division 32 of the American Psychological Association is publishing its response to the third draft :

To the DSM-5 Task Force and the American Psychiatric Association

As you know, the Open Letter Committee of the Society for Humanistic Psychology and the Coalition for DSM-5 Reform have been following the development of DSM-5 closely.

We appreciate the opportunity for public commentary on the most recent version of the DSM-5 draft proposals. We intend to submit this brief letter via the dsm5.org feedback portal and to post it for public viewing on our website at http://dsm5-reform.com/

Since its posting in October 2011, the Open Letter to the DSM-5, which was written in response to the second version of the draft proposals, has garnered support from almost 50 mental health organizations and over 13,500 individual mental health professionals and others.

Our three primary concerns in the letter were as follows: the DSM-5 proposals appear to lower diagnostic thresholds, expanding the purview of mental disorder to include normative reactions to life events; some new proposals (e.g., “Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder” and “Attenuated Psychosis Syndrome”) seem to lack the empirical grounding necessary for inclusion in a scientific taxonomy; newly proposed disorders are particularly likely to be diagnosed in vulnerable populations, such as children and the elderly, for whom the over-prescription of powerful psychiatric drugs is already a growing nationwide problem; and the increased emphasis on medico-biological theories for mental disorder despite the fact that recent research strongly points to multifactorial etiologies.

We appreciate some of the changes made in this third version of the draft proposals, in particular the relegation of Attenuated Psychosis Syndrome and Mixed Anxiety-Depression to the Appendix for further research. We believe these disorders had insufficient empirical backing for inclusion in the manual itself. In addition, given the continuing elusiveness of biomarkers, we are relieved to find that you have proposed a modified definition of mental disorder that does not include the phrase “underlying psychobiological dysfunction.”

Despite these positive changes, we remain concerned about a number of the DSM-5 proposals, as well as the apparent setbacks in the development process.

Our continuing concerns are:

• The proposal to include new disorders with relatively little empirical support and/or research literature that is relatively recent (e.g., Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder)

• The lowering of diagnostic thresholds, which may result in diagnostic expansion and various iatrogenic hazards, such as inappropriate treatment and stigmatization of normative life processes. Examples include the newly proposed Minor Neurocognitive Disorder, as well as proposed changes to Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Pedophilia, and the new behavioral addictions.

• The perplexing Personality Disorders overhaul, which is an unnecessarily complex and idiosyncratic system that is likely to have little clinical utility in everyday practice.

• The development of novel scales (e.g., severity scales) with little psychometric testing rather than utilizing established standards.

In addition, we are increasingly concerned about several aspects of the development process. These are:

• Continuing delays, particularly in the drafting and field testing of the proposals.

• The substandard results of the first set of field trials, which revealed kappas below accepted reliability standards.

• The cancelation of the second set of field trials.

• The lack of formal forensic review.

• Ad hominem responses to critics.

• The hiring of a PR firm to influence the interpretation and dissemination of information about DSM-5, which is not standard scientific practice.

We understand that there have been recent attempts to locate a “middle ground” between the DSM-5 proposals and DSM-5 criticism. We believe that, given the extremity and idiosyncrasy of some of the proposed changes to the manual, this claim of a “middle ground” is more rhetorical and polemic than empirical or measured. A true middle ground, we believe, would draw on medical ethics and scientific standards to revise the proposals in a careful way that prioritizes patient safety, especially protection against unnecessary treatment, above institutional needs.

Therefore, we would like to reiterate our call for an independent scientific review of the manual by professionals whose relationship to the DSM-5 Task Force and/or American Psychiatric Association does not constitute a conflict of interest.

As the deadline for the future manual approaches, we urge the DSM-5 Task Force and all concerned mental health professionals to examine the proposed manual with scientific and expert scrutiny.

It is not only our professional standards, but also –and most importantly– patient care that is at stake. We thank you for your time and serious consideration of our concerns, and we hope that you will continue to engage in dialogue with those calling for reform of DSM-5.

Sincerely,

The DSM-5 Open Letter Committee of the Society for Humanistic Society, Division 32 of the American Psychological Association

Filed under Allen Frances, American Psychiatric Association (APA), David Kupfer, DSM revision process, DSM-5 consultation, DSM-5 draft proposals, DSM-5 field trials, DSM-5 in the media, DSM-5 third draft, DSM-5 timeline Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

DSM-5 controversy: Lane on “SAD”, Frances Follows the Money, Spitzer et al on Kappa reliability

June 12, 2012 by

DSM-5 controversy round up:

Lane on “SAD”; Frances “Follows the Money”; Spitzer et al on Kappa reliability; A Closer Look at Pending Changes to the Future of Psychiatric Diagnosis June issue The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease

Post #178 Shortlink: http://wp.me/pKrrB-2em

Side Effects at Psychology Today

From quirky to serious, trends in psychology and psychiatry.

Christopher Lane, Ph.D. | June 11, 2012

Naming an Ailment: The Case of Social Anxiety Disorder”

“Social phobia” vs. “Social anxiety disorder”: What’s in a name?

…“Using data collected from a telephone survey of residents of New York State,” the letter writers continue, “we investigated whether the disorder name affects the perceived need for treatment. Random-digit dialing was used to obtain phone numbers … In total, 806 people participated.”

“Respondents heard a brief vignette describing a person who experiences discomfort in social situations and often avoids social events. These symptoms were labeled as either social phobia or social anxiety disorder, and respondents indicated whether the person should seek mental health treatment.”

The results are dubious to say the least…

Read full commentary

Psychology Today

DSM 5 in Distress | Allen Frances

Follow The Money
APA puts publishing profits above public trust

Allen Frances MD | June 11, 2012

…APA treats DSM-5 like a valuable publishing property, not as a public trust that importantly impacts on people’s lives and public policy. It is excellent at protecting its “intellectual property” with confidentiality agreements and at protecting its trademark and copyright with bullying threats of law suits. But APA has been sadly incompetent and wildly profligate in the day-to-day work of actually producing a safe and scientifically sound DSM-5.

Dr Scully is asking us to believe ten very unbelievable things. My view – if you want to understand why an unreliable and unsafe DSM-5 is being rushed prematurely to market – is to “follow the money…”

Read full commentary at DSM-5 in Distress

Newswire

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=1109031

The American Journal of Psychiatry, VOL. 169, No. 5

Letters to the Editor | May 01, 2012

Standards for DSM-5 Reliability

Robert L. Spitzer, M.D.; Janet B.W. Williams, Ph.D.; Jean Endicott, Ph.D.
Princeton, N.J. New York City

Am J Psychiatry 2012;169:537-537. 10.1176/appi.ajp.2012.12010083

TO THE EDITOR: In the January issue of the Journal, Helena Chmura Kraemer, Ph.D., and colleagues (1) ask, in anticipation of the results of the DSM-5 field trial reliability study, how much reliability is reasonable to expect. They argue that standards for interpreting kappa reliability, which have been widely accepted by psychiatric researchers, are unrealistically high…

A Closer Look at Pending Changes to the Future of Psychiatric Diagnosis

Released: 6/7/2012 9:00 AM EDT
Source: Wolters Kluwer Health: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

Articles Have Potential to Affect Final DSM-5 Standards as Public comment Period Ends

Newswise — New York, NY (June 7, 2012) – The June issue of The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (JNMD) features a special section focused on the impending release of the revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), an update to psychiatric diagnosis standards. JNMD is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, part of Wolters Kluwer Health.

The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease Editor-in-Chief John A. Talbott, MD, (a past APA president and DSM-III collaborator) comments in his editorial, “The timing of this special section on DSM-5, therefore, is particularly auspicious because it provides the potential for these articles to affect the final DSM-5 decisions.” The DSM-5 manual, currently scheduled for publication in May 2013, is going through its final public comment period through June 15, 2012.

Many articles within the section present criticisms of DSM-5 proposals. Specifically, several authors worry that the new DSM-5 standards may open up more opportunities for false-positives – a doctor diagnosing a condition when it is not present, or providing medication when it is not needed.

• “Diagnostic Inflation: Causes and Suggested Cure” by Batstra and Frances displays the authors’ concern that the proposed changes to DSM-5 will result in diagnostic inflation and inappropriate use of medication. They suggest “stepped diagnosis,” which includes a watch-and-wait period before beginning medication, to combat false-positives.

• In “Recurrence of Bereavement-Related Depression: Evidence for the Validity of the DSM-IV Bereavement Exclusion From the Epidemiological Catchment Area Study,” Wakefield and Schmitz contend that the DSM-5 proposal to remove the bereavement exclusion from the definition of a major depressive episode would cause those who are experiencing normal grief after the death of a loved one to be mislabeled as clinically depressed.

Other articles respond to DSM-5 proposals to include new disorders and diagnostic constructs. For example, DSM-5 proposes to reclassify pathological gambling as a behavioral addiction, which may pave the way for other excessive behaviors to be included in this construct in the future.

• Mihordin takes a look at the potential consequences of this change in his article, “Behavioral Addiction V Quo Vadis?” in which he presents hypothetical criteria for the diagnosis of pathological model railroading disorder.

• Good and Burstein respond to the DSM-5 proposal to include a hebephilic subtype to the diagnosis of pedophilia in “Hebephilia and the Construction of a Fictitious Diagnosis”. Additionally, Wakefield examines two DSM-5 proposals on classifying pathological forms of grief as mental disorders in “Should Prolonged Grief Be Reclassified as a Mental Disorder in DSM-5? Reconsidering the Empirical and Conceptual Arguments for Complicated Grief Disorder.”

Included in the special section, “Psychotropic Marketing Practices and Problems: Implication for DSM-5” by Raven and Perry looks at how certain aspects of DSM-5 could be used by the pharmaceutical industry as marketing tools, especially with a wider customer base resulting from false-positive patients. In “A Critique of the DSM-5 Field Trials,” Jones examines problems that may have compromised the usefulness of the DSM-5 field trials.

It is important to note that the articles in the special section of JNMD were written at various points since February 2010 based on the criteria sets posted on the DSM-5 website. Many of these criteria sets have been updated since their initial posting. “Thus, the critiques of certain proposals contained in these articles may no longer be fully relevant to what is actually being proposed for DSM-5,” Dr. Talbott states in his editorial. Visit the DSM-5 website at http://www.dsm5.org/  for the most accurate information on what is being considered for inclusion in DSM-5.

# # #

About The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
Founded in 1874, The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease is the world’s oldest, continuously published independent scientific monthly in the field of human behavior. Articles cover theory, etiology, therapy, social impact of illness, and research methods

Filed under Allen Frances, American Psychiatric Association (APA), Christopher Lane, Criticism of DSM-V, DSM-5, DSM revision process, DSM-5 draft proposals, DSM-5 field trials, DSM-5 in the media, DSM-5 third draft, Robert Spitzer Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Allen Frances: “Follow the Money”

June 10, 2012 by

Allen Frances writing on Huffington Post: “Follow the Money”

Post #177 Shortlink: http://wp.me/pKrrB-2e3

Allen Frances, who had oversight of the development of DSM-IV, responds to DSM-5 Inaccuracies: Setting the Record Straight by James H Skully, CEO and Medical Director to the American Psychiatric Association.

Huffington Post Blogs | Allen Frances

Follow the Money

Allen Frances MD | June 9, 2012

…The APA budget depends heavily on the huge publishing profits generated by its DSM monopoly. APA needs the money badly. It is losing paying members; other sources of funding are also on a downward trend; and its budget projections require a big May 2013 injection of DSM-5 cash…

…APA treats DSM-5 like a valuable publishing property, not as a public trust that importantly impacts on people’s lives and public policy. It is excellent at protecting its “intellectual property” with confidentiality agreements and at protecting its trademark and copyright with bullying threats of law suits. But APA has been sadly incompetent and wildly profligate in the day-to-day work of actually producing a safe and scientifically sound DSM-5.

Dr Scully is asking us to believe ten very unbelievable things. My view – if you want to understand why an unreliable and unsafe DSM-5 is being rushed prematurely to market – is to “follow the money…”

Read full commentary on Huff Po

Filed under Allen Frances, American Psychiatric Association (APA), DSM revision process, DSM-5, DSM-5 draft proposals, DSM-5 field trials, DSM-5 in the media, DSM-5 third draft, DSM-V, SLAPP suit Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

DSM-5 round-up: Lane on “DSM-5 Facts” site, Frances on DSM-5, Kupfer on Frances

June 5, 2012 by

DSM-5 round-up: Lane on new “DSM-5 Facts” site, Frances on DSM-5, Kupfer on Frances

Post #176 Shortlink: http://wp.me/pKrrB-2cQ

What we were waiting for were the “full results” of the reliability data from the DSM-5 field trials.

What we got was a public relations sticking plaster.

Christopher Lane reported in Side Effects on the American Psychiatric Association’s new platform DSM-5 Facts – a website launched, last week, to “correct the record, highlight key omissions – and provide essential perspective so that the public has a complete and accurate view…“

Side Effects

Christopher Lane, Ph.D. | June 4, 2012

The APA’s PR Problem
Why is the American Psychiatric Association hiring a PR company to market DSM-5?

As the news tumbled out last week that the American Psychiatric Association had hired GYMR, an expensive PR company, to help the organization “execute strategies that include image and alliance building, public education campaigns or media relations to harness the formidable forces of Washington and produce successful results for clients” (services that GYMR brags about in its mission statement), it became clearer than ever that the APA has more than an image-problem with DSM-5…

Read on

In a long interview with Allen Frances, Stephen M. Strakowski asks: What’s wrong with DSM-5 and what needs to be done to put it right?

Medscape Psychiatry

What’s Wrong With DSM-5?

Stephen M. Strakowski, MD; Allen J. Frances, MD | June 1, 2012

Addressing Prescription Drug Abuse: Introduction
The Biggest Problems With DSM-5?
What Would Dr. Frances Do?
A Safe, Credible DSM-5 by 2013?

…The reliability-test results for stage 1 show that DSM-5 badly flunked and that stage 2 is desperately needed. The leadership lowered expectations with statements indicating that they are willing to accept diagnostic agreements far below historical levels and include proposals achieving diagnostic agreements that are little better than chance. This is simply not acceptable and should not be accepted…

…it is discouraging that DSM-5 has not accepted the need for external review, is going forward with poorly written and unreliable criteria sets, and still contains so many unsafe and scientifically unsound proposals. It remains to be seen whether DSM-5 will be responsive to what is certain to be increasing external pressure to trim its sails and improve its quality. If it attempts to hang tough, I think DSM-5 will no longer be used much (if at all) overseas and will also lose much of its following in the United States…

Task Force Chair, David J. Kupfer, MD, responds:

Medscape Psychiatry

Dr. Kupfer Defends DSM-5

David J. Kupfer, MD | June 1, 2012

Editor’s Note:
In a recent Medscape interview with Dr. Stephen Strakowski, DSM-IV Task Force Chair Dr. Allen J. Frances expressed serious concerns about a number of proposals being considered for inclusion in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), scheduled for release in May 2013. Below, DSM-5 Task Force Chair Dr. David Kupfer defends the proposed revision.

A DSM-5 Defense
Will DSM-5 Inflate Prevalence?

A third Medscape report from the APA’s Annual Conference by Nassir Ghaemi, MD:

Medscape Psychiatry

DSM-5: Finding a Middle Ground

Nassir Ghaemi, MD | June 1, 2012

Professor of Psychiatry, Tufts University School of Medicine; Director, Mood Disorders Program, Psychiatry Department, Tufts Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts

DSM-5: Validity vs Reliability
But DSM-IV Has Limitations, Too

Two more commentaries from 1 Boring Old Man on DSM-5 process and field trial Kappa results:

the APA Trustees must intervene in the DSM-5…

1 Boring Old Man | June 4, 2012

and will…

1 Boring Old Man | June 3, 2012

Filed under Allen Frances, American Psychiatric Association (APA), Criticism of DSM-V, DSM-5, David Kupfer, DSM revision process, DSM-5, DSM-5 draft proposals, DSM-5 field trials, DSM-5 in the media, DSM-5 third draft Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

DSM-5 in New Scientist: Psychiatry’s new diagnostic bible is creating headaches for doctors and patients alike

May 18, 2012 by

DSM-5 in New Scientist: “Psychiatry’s new diagnostic bible is creating headaches for doctors and patients alike”

Post #171 Shortlink: http://wp.me/pKrrB-293

A reminder that this third and final stakeholder review and comment period is scheduled to close on June 15.

On May 17, APA added the following statement to the home page of the DSM-5 Development site.

APA Position Statement on DSM-5 Draft Diagnostic Criteria

The official position of the APA on draft DSM-5 diagnostic criteria is that they are not to be used for clinical or billing purposes under any circumstances. They are published on the http://www.dsm5.org Web site to obtain feedback on these preliminary DSM-5 Task Force proposals from mental health professionals, patients, and the general public. They have not received official reviews or approval by the APA Board of Trustees and will not be available for clinical use or billing purposes until May 2013.

Two articles in this week’s online and print editions of New Scientist.

The first report, by Peter Aldhous, quotes Allen Frances, MD, who had chaired the development of the DSM-IV; APA research director and DSM-5 Task Force Vice Chair, Darrel Regier, and Dr Dayle Jones who is tracking DSM-5 for the American Counseling Association, on DSM-5 field trial kappa results and the relegation of Attenuated psychosis syndrome and Mixed anxiety/depression to the DSM-5 appendix.

This article is behind a paywall or a subscription to the print edition.

New Scientist 19 May 2012

Page 6 print edition

THIS WEEK/MENTAL HEALTH

Psychiatry’s new diagnostic bible is creating headaches for doctors and patients alike

Online title Trials highlight worrying flaws in psychiatry ‘bible’

Peter Aldhous

Diagnosis: uncertain

HOW reliable is reliable enough?

The second article, “OPINION ‘Label jars, not people”, by James Davies, is accessible on the New Scientist website without payment or print edition subscription.

New Scientist 19 May 2012

Page 7 print edition

OPINION | James Davies

James Davies is a senior lecturer in social anthropology and psychotherapy at the University of Roehampton, London

‘Label jars, not people’

“LABEL jars, not people” and “stop medicalising the normal symptoms of life” read placards, as hundreds of protesters – including former patients, academics and doctors – gathered to lobby the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) annual meeting.

The demonstration aimed to highlight the harm the protesters believe psychiatry is perpetrating in the name of healing. One concern is that while psychiatric medications are more widely prescribed than almost any drugs in history, they often don’t work well and have debilitating side effects. Psychiatry also professes to respect human rights, while regularly treating people against their will. Finally, psychiatry keeps expanding its list of disorders without solid scientific justification…

Read full article

Filed under Allen Frances, American Psychiatric Association (APA), Darrel Regier, DSM-5 consultation, DSM-5 draft proposals, DSM-5 field trials, DSM-5 in the media, DSM-5 third draft, Kappa, New Scientist Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Two proposed changes dropped from DSM-5: Media round-up

May 10, 2012 by

Two proposed changes dropped from DSM-5: Media round-up

Post #169 Shortlink: http://wp.me/pKrrB-28a

Pharma Blog

Should A Federal Agency Oversee The DSM?

Ed Silverman | May 15, 2012

…Frances proposes that a federal agency ought to assume the job of developing the DSM, although he believes a new organization would be required, one that could be housed in the US Department of Health and Human Services, the Institute of Medicine or the World Health Organization. An equivalent of the FDA is needed to “mind the store,” as he puts it.

This may raise a different set of objections, of course. To what extent, for instance, should a federal agency delve deeply into determining diagnoses and definitions? On the other hand, perhaps this would remove the concerns over self-interest and conflict that have tainted the process. What do you think?

Should a Federal Agency Run The DSM?

Psych Central

An Epidemic of Mental Disorders?

John M. Grohol, PsyD, Founder & Editor-in-Chief | May 15, 2012

Psychiatric Times

COMMENTARY

Is There Really an “Epidemic” of Psychiatric Illness in the US?

Ronald W. Pies, MD | May 1, 2012

Epidemic: (from epidēmos, prevalent : epi-, epi- + dēmos, people) “…an epidemic refers to an excessive occurrence of a disease.”–from Friis & Sellers, Epidemiology for Public Health Practice, 4th ed, 2010

If claims in the non-professional media can be believed, there is a “raging epidemic of mental illness” in the US¹, if not world-wide—and, in one version of this narrative, psychiatric treatment itself is identified as the culprit. There are several formulations of the “epidemic narrative,” depending on which of psychiatry’s critics is writing. In the most radical version, it is psychiatric medication that is fueling the supposed burgeoning of mental illness, particularly depression and schizophrenia.² More subtle variants suggest that there is a “false epidemic” of some psychiatric disorders, driven by dramatically rising rates of “false positive” diagnoses.³…

Time Healthland

Mental Health

DSM 5 Could Mean 40% of College Students Are Alcoholics

Maia Szalavitz | May 14, 2012

Most college binge drinkers and drug users don’t develop lifelong problems. But new mental-health guidelines will label too many of them addicts and alcoholics…

Side Effects at Psychology Today

DSM-5 Is Diagnosed, with a Stinging Rebuke to the APA
The regrettable history of the DSM

Christopher Lane, Ph.D. | May 14, 2013

…Among the fiercest critics quoted is Mark Rapley, a clinical psychologist at the University of East London, who puts it this way: “The APA insists that psychiatry is a science. [But] real sciences do not decide on the existence and nature of the phenomena they are dealing with via a show of hands with a vested interest and pharmaceutical industry sponsorship.” Despite commending the DSM-5 authors for “reconsidering some of their most unfortunate mistakes,” clinical psychologist Peter Kinderman of the University of Liverpool adds that the manual remains, at bottom, a bad and faulty system. “The very minor revisions recently announced do not constitute the wholesale revision that is called for,” he is quoted as saying. “It would be very unfortunate if these minor changes were to be used to suggest that the task force has listened in any meaningful way to critics….”

The New American

Critics Blast Big Psychiatry for Invented and Redefined Mental Illnesses

Alex Newman | May 13, 2012

Allen J Frances lecture

Published on 11 May 2012 by tvochannel

Psychiatrist and author, Allen J. Frances, believes that mental illnesses are being over-diagnosed. In his lecture, Diagnostic Inflation: Does Everyone Have a Mental Illness?, Dr. Frances outlines why he thinks the DSM-V will lead to millions of people being mislabeled with mental disorders. His lecture was part of Mental Health Matters, an initiative of TVO in association with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

Podcast http://bit.ly/KhLuhd

57:36 mins | 19 MB

As part of Mental Health Matters Week, Big Ideas presents a lecture by Allen J Frances, MD, who had chaired the DSM-IV Task Force.

Website http://a2zn.com/?p=3507

News wire

May 6, 2012 University of Toronto

Produced in collaboration with the Center for Addiction and Mental Health

Allen J Frances lecture

Diagnostic inflation. Does everyone have a mental illness?

Big Ideas – May 12 and 13 at 5 pm ET

TVO’s lecture series will present special guest speaker Dr. Allen J. Frances, who will outline why he believes that mental illnesses are being over-diagnosed these days and why he thinks the fifth and latest version of the psychiatrist’s bible, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders will lead to millions of people being mislabeled with mental disorders.

The lecture will be recorded May 6 at University of Toronto’s Hart House.

1 Boring Old Man

the dreams of our fathers I…

1 Boring Old Man |  May 12, 2012

University Diaries

“Diagnostic Exuberance”…

Margaret Soltan | May 13, 2012

BMJ News

More psychiatrists attack plans for DSM-5

BMJ 2012; 344 doi: 10.1136/bmj.e3357 (Published 11 May 2012)

Geoff Watts

The authors of the 5th edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), due to be published in May 2013, have responded to previous criticisms of their text by announcing a further series of changes.1

But far from mollifying their critics, these concessions have served to ignite a further and still more vituperative barrage of dissent.

The list of topics under reconsideration or already subject to change can be found on the DSM-5 website.2 It includes the proposed “attenuated psychosis syndrome,” which is slated for further study, and also major depressive disorder. Here the authors have added a footnote “to …

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Scientific American Blogs

Why Are There No Biological Tests in Psychiatry?

By Ingrid Wickelgren | May 11, 2012 | 2

Part 5 of a 5-part series Allen Frances

New York Times

Op-Ed Contributor

Diagnosing the D.S.M.

Allen Frances | May 11, 2012

“…All mental-health disciplines need representation — not just psychiatrists but also psychologists, counselors, social workers and nurses. The broader consequences of changes should be vetted by epidemiologists, health economists and public-policy and forensic experts. Primary care doctors prescribe the majority of psychotropic medication, often carelessly, and need to contribute to the diagnostic system if they are to use it correctly. Consumers should play an important role in the review process, and field testing should occur in real life settings, not just academic centers.

Psychiatric diagnosis is simply too important to be left exclusively in the hands of psychiatrists. They will always be an essential part of the mix but should no longer be permitted to call all the shots…”

MedPage Today

DSM-5: What’s In, What’s Out

John Gever, Senior Editor, MedPage Today |  May 10, 2012

   …The final drafts are to be completed by August, then they must be approved by a scientific review committee and the task force leadership, and finally by the APA’s governing bodies.

Kupfer said the final version has to be completed by December, when it’s set to go to the printer. Its formal release is planned for the APA’s annual meeting next May in San Francisco.

Here’s a brief overview of the changes you can expect…

WHAT’S OUT
WHAT’S IN (or STILL IN)
WHAT DIDN’T MAKE IT
WHAT TO LOOK FORWARD TO

Reuters 1

Two proposed changes dropped from psychiatric guide

Julie Steenhuysen | Reuters CHICAGO | May 9, 2012

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Two proposed psychiatric diagnoses failed to make the last round of cuts in the laborious process of revising the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — an exhaustive catalog of symptoms used by doctors to diagnose psychiatric illness.

Gone from the latest revision are “attenuated psychosis syndrome,” intended to help identify individuals at risk of full-blown psychosis, and “mixed anxiety depressive disorder”, a blend of anxiety and depression symptoms. Both performed badly on field tests and in public comments gathered by the group in its march toward the May 2013 publication deadline.

Both have been tucked into Section III of the manual — the place reserved for ideas that do not yet have enough evidence to make the cut as a full-blown diagnosis.

What has survived, despite fierce public outcry, is a change in the diagnosis of autism, which eliminates the milder diagnosis of Asperger syndrome in favor of the umbrella diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.

But that, too, could still be altered before the final manual is published, the group says. The APA opened the final comment period for its fifth diagnostic manual known as DSM-V on May 2, and it will accumulate comments through June 15.

Dr. David Kupfer, who chairs the DSM-5 Task Force, said in a statement that the changes reflect the latest research and input from the public.

Dr. Wayne Goodman, professor and chairman of the department of psychiatry at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, said he’s glad the task force is responding to feedback from professionals and the public.

“I think they are trying to listen,” he said.

Goodman agrees with the decisions to drop both of the two disorders in the latest revision.

With the “mixed anxiety and depressive disorder,” he said there was a risk that it would capture a number of people who did not qualify under a diagnosis of depression or anxiety alone.

“It could lead to overdiagnosis,” Goodman said.

He said the “attenuated psychosis syndrome” diagnosis would have been useful for research purposes to help identify those at risk of psychosis, but there was a concern that it might label people who were just a bit different as mentally ill.

“The predictive value is not clear yet,” he said. “I think it’s reasonable not to codify it until we have better definition of its predictive value.”

Goodman, who worked on DSM-4, the last revision of the manual published in 1994, and is working on the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder section of the current revision of DSM-5, said the strength of the process is that it can offer a reliable way for psychiatrists across the country to identify patients with the same sorts of disorders.

The weakness, he said, is that it largely lacks biological evidence — blood tests, imaging tests and the like — that can validate these diagnoses.

“DSM-5 is a refinement of our diagnostic system, but it doesn’t add to our ability to understand the underlying illness,” he said.

Dr. Emil Coccaro, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Chicago Medicine, said typically changes in the DSM occur because of new data.

Coccaro, who is contributing to the new section in the DSM-5 on Intermittent Explosive Disorder, said there is no question that many people aren’t convinced that some of the diagnoses need to be changed, or that there need to be new ones added.

“This also happened the last time when they did DSM-4,” he said, but that was nearly 20 years ago.

“You can keep waiting but at certain point you have to fish or cut bait and actually come out with a new edition. That is what is happening now,” he said.

Comments to the manual can be submitted at www.DSM5.org

(Reporting By Julie Steenhuysen)

Reuters 2

Experts unconvinced by changes to psychiatric guide

Kate Kelland | Reuters LONDON | May 10, 2012

(Reuters) – Many psychiatrists believe a new edition of a manual designed to help diagnose mental illness should be shelved for at least a year for further revisions, despite some modifications which eliminated two controversial diagnoses.

The new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5) is due out this month, the first full revision since 1994 of the renowned handbook, which is used worldwide and determines how to interpret symptoms in order to diagnose mental illnesses.

But more than 13,000 health professionals from around the world have already signed an open letter petition (at dsm5-reform.com) calling for DSM 5 to be halted and re-thought.

“Fundamentally, it remains a bad system,” said Peter Kinderman, a professor of clinical psychology at Britain’s Liverpool University.

“The very minor revisions…do not constitute the wholesale revision that is called for,” he said in an emailed comment.

The American Psychiatric Association (APA), which produces the DSM, said on Wednesday it had decided to drop two proposed diagnoses, for “attenuated psychosis syndrome” and “mixed anxiety depressive disorder”.

The former, intended to help identify people at risk of full-blown psychosis, and the latter, which suggested a blend of anxiety and depression, had been criticized as too ill-defined.

With these and other new diagnoses such as “oppositional defiant disorder” and “apathy syndrome”, experts said the draft DSM 5 could define as mentally ill millions of healthy people – ranging from shy or defiant children to grieving relatives, to people with harmless fetishes.

“SIMPLY NOT USABLE”

Robin Murray, a professor of psychiatric research at the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College London, said it was a great relief to see the changes in the draft, particularly to the attenuated psychosis diagnosis.

“It would have done a lot of harm by diverting doctors into thinking about imagined risk of psychosis (and) it would have led to unnecessary fears among patients that they were about to go mad,” he said in a statement.

But Allen Frances, emeritus professor at Duke University in the United States, said: “This is only a first small step toward desperately needed DSM 5 reform. Numerous dangerous suggestions remain.”

Frances, who chaired a committee overseeing the DSM 4, added that the DSM 5 “is simply not usable” and should be delayed for a year “to allow for independent review, to clean up its obscure writing, and for retesting”.

Diagnosis is always controversial in psychiatry, since it defines how patients will be treated based on a cluster of symptoms, many of which occur in several different types of mental illness.

Some argue that the whole approach needs to be changed to pay more attention to individual circumstances rather than slotting them into predefined categories.

“(The DSM) is wrong in principle, based as it is on redefining a whole range of understandable reactions to life circumstances as ‘illnesses’, which then become a target for toxic medications heavily promoted by the pharmaceutical industry,” said Lucy Johnstone, a consultant clinical psychologist for the Cwm Taf Health Board in Wales.

“The DSM project cannot be justified, in principle or in practice. It must be abandoned so that we can find more humane and effective ways of responding to mental distress.”

Others, however, are pushing more for the manual to be reviewed more thoroughly to allow for more accurate diagnosis and, in theory, more appropriate treatment.

One of the proposed changes that has survived in the draft DSM 5 – despite fierce public outcry – is in autism. The new edition eliminates the milder diagnosis of Asperger syndrome in favor of the umbrella diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.

(Editing by Myra MacDonald)

New York Times

Psychiatry Manual Drafters Back Down on Diagnoses

Benedict Carey | May 8, 2012

In a rare step, doctors on a panel revising psychiatry’s influential diagnostic manual have backed away from two controversial proposals that would have expanded the number of people identified as having psychotic or depressive disorders.

The doctors dropped two diagnoses that they ultimately concluded were not supported by the evidence: “attenuated psychosis syndrome,” proposed to identify people at risk of developing psychosis, and “mixed anxiety depressive disorder,” a hybrid of the two mood problems.

They also tweaked their proposed definition of depression to allay fears that the normal sadness people experience after the loss of a loved one, a job or a marriage would be mistaken for a mental disorder.

But the panel, appointed by the American Psychiatric Association to complete the fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or D.S.M., did not retreat from another widely criticized proposal, to streamline the definition of autism. Predictions by some experts that the new definition will sharply reduce the number of people given a diagnosis are off base, panel members said, citing evidence from a newly completed study.

Both the study and the newly announced reversals are being debated this week at the psychiatric association’s annual meeting in Philadelphia, where dozens of sessions were devoted to the D.S.M., the standard reference for mental disorders, which drives research, treatment and insurance decisions.

Dr. David J. Kupfer, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh and the chairman of the task force making revisions, said the changes came in response mainly to field trials — real-world studies testing whether newly proposed diagnoses are reliable from one psychiatrist to the next — and also public commentary. “Our intent for disorders that require more evidence is that they be studied further, and that people work with the criteria” and refine them, Dr. Kupfer said…

CBS News

Panel suggests DSM-5 psychiatry manual drops two disorders, keeps new autism definition

Michelle Castillo | May 10, 2012

(CBS News) – A panel of doctors reviewing the much-debated Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5 (DSM-5) have recommended to drop two controversial diagnoses.

The panel announced that attenuated psychosis syndrome — which identifies people at risk of developing psychosis — and mixed anxiety depressive disorder — a diagnosis which combines both anxiety and depression — should not be included in the manual’s upcoming version, the New York Times reported.

Proposed changes to autism definition may mean new diagnoses for people with Asperger’s

However, a controversial definition for autism, which will delete diagnoses for Asperger’s syndrome and pervasive developmental disorder and combine severe cases into the broader definition of autism, will remain…

MedPage Today

Autism Criteria Critics Blasted by DSM-5 Leader

John Gever, Senior Editor | May 08, 2012

PHILADELPHIA — The head of the American Psychiatric Association committee rewriting the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorders took on the panel’s critics here, accusing them of bad science.

Susan Swedo, MD, of the National Institute of Mental Health, said a review released earlier this year by Yale University researchers was seriously flawed. That review triggered a wave of headlines indicating that large numbers of autism spectrum patients could lose their diagnoses and hence access to services…

Nature

Psychosis risk syndrome excluded from DSM-5

Benefits of catching psychosis early are deemed to come at too high a price.

Amy Max | May 9, 2012

A controversial category of mental illness will not be included in the revised fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), the American Psychiatric Association (APA) has said. Attenuated psychosis syndrome, also known as psychosis risk syndrome, had been intended mainly for young adults who have heard whispers in their heads, viewed objects as threatening or suffered other subtly psychotic symptoms…

Scientific American Blogs

Trouble at the Heart of Psychiatry’s Revised Rule Book

Ingrid Wickelgren | May 9, 2012

Part 3 in a series

Huffington Post | Allen Frances Blog

Psychiatric Mislabeling Is Bad for Your Mental Health

Allen Frances, MD | May 9, 2012

Filed under Allen Frances, American Psychiatric Association (APA), David Kupfer, DSM-5 consultation, DSM-5 draft proposals, DSM-5 field trials, DSM-5 in the media, DSM-5 Petitions, DSM-5 third draft Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

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