The DSM-V, Parenting and Labels The Huffington Post – October 2, 2013 By Adivan Milevsky, Professor of Psychology The American Psychiatric Association recently released its…
Amy Bevis wasn’t schizophrenic – she was being bullied at school.
People who hoard, pick their skin, binge eat or throw temper tantrums will soon be classed as having a serious mental illness.
The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), to be released on May 22, includes an extended list of psychological behaviors.
But the decision to categorize seemingly benign habits as full-fledged disorders has divided opinion, and many believe it just extends the ‘reach of psychiatry further into daily life.’
When the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders hits the stores on May 22nd, it will signal the end of a fraught thirteen-year campaign. Every revision of the D.S.M. causes controversy; that’s what happens when experts argue in public about the nature of human suffering. But never has the process provoked warfare so brutal, with attacks coming from within the profession as well from psychiatry’s usual opponents. Indeed, it’s possible that no book has ever been subject to such scrutiny in the course of being written. It is as if J. K. Rowling had produced her Harry Potter sequels in a glass studio with fans looking on and banging the windows whenever she typed something they didn’t like.
Every parent of a preteen has been there: on the receiving end of sullen responses, bursts of frustration or anger, even public tantrums that summon the fear that Children’s Aid is on its way. Come late May, with the publication of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), however, such sustained cranky behaviour could put your child at risk of a diagnosis of “disruptive mood dysregulation disorder.”