The fight over the DSM

[Butterfly]

The fight over the DSM
Los Angeles Times
13 February, 2010


http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-diagnostic13-2010feb13,0,5577548.story


A new diagnostic manual prepared by the American Psychiatric Assn. either trivializes serious conditions, needlessly encourages hurtful stereotypes or succumbs to political correctness, depending on whom you believe.

Even experts will question one classification or another in the draft fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is why it's been posted on the Internet for comments years before its expected publication in 2013. But the intention of the authors -- to define more precisely which conditions require psychotherapy and how they're related to one another -- is laudable. And some of the early objections seem rooted more in politics or perception than in science.