By: Max Borders, washingtonexaminer.com 01/18/11:
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has gone crazy -- like a fox.
There was a time when we could be more charitable about the vagaries in the APA’s Bible, the DSM. But not anymore. If you’ve never heard of the DSM, it’s the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual series the APA publishes.
Psychiatrists all over the world use the DSM as a guidebook for treating people with some form of mental illness. But the APA may test credulity with its upcoming edition.
I refer specifically to proposed changes in the DSM-V due out in 2013. It’s no accident these changes reflect new political realities about how psychiatric medicine gets paid for and by whom. Consider this from Reuters back in July:
Leading mental health experts [in Britain] gave a briefing on Tuesday to warn that a new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which is being revised now for publication in 2013, could devalue the seriousness of mental illness and label almost everyone as having some kind of disorder.
Citing examples of new additions like "mild anxiety depression," "psychosis risk syndrome," and "temper dysregulation disorder," they said many people previously seen as perfectly healthy could in future be told they are ill.
"It's leaking into normality. It is shrinking the pool of what is normal to a puddle," said Til Wykes of the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College London. Read more>>
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