Psychiatrists Revising the Book of Human Troubles

[Natasha]

Psychiatrists Revising the Book of Human Troubles

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/health/18psych.html
BENEDICT CAREY
12/18/2008

The manual — known by its initials and edition number, DSM-V — often organizes symptoms under an evocative name. Labels like obsessive-compulsive disorder have connotations in the wider culture and for an individual's self-perception.

"This is not cardiology or nephrology, where the basic diseases are well known," said Edward Shorter, a leading historian of psychiatry whose latest book, "Before Prozac," is critical of the manual. "In psychiatry no one knows the causes of anything, so classification can be driven by all sorts of factors" — political, social and financial.