DSM-V Finalized

... The American Psychiatric Association have just announced that the new diagnostic manual, to be officially published in May 2013, has been approved by the board of trustees. You can read the official announcement and a summary of the major changes online as a pdf – and it seems a few big developments are due.

The various autism-related disorders have been replaced by a single ‘autism spectrum disorder’ – essentially removing Asperger’s from the manual. 

 A ‘disruptive mood dysregulation disorder’ has been added to “diagnose children who exhibit persistent irritability and frequent episodes of behavior outbursts three or more times a week for more than a year”. As the APA admit, this is largely to address the rise of the ‘childhood bipolar disorder’ concept which has led to a huge number of children with challenging behaviour being medicated on rather ill-defined grounds. Whether this actually does anything to change this, is another matter. 

 Despite the expected revision of the overly complex and often indistinguishable subtypes of personality disorder – these have been kept as they were. 

 Posttraumatic stress disorder has been tinkered with – apparently to pay “more attention to the behavioral symptoms” and presumably to exclude ‘PTSD after seeing things on the TV’ – a change included in all the drafts. 

 Perhaps most controversially, the bereavement exclusion will be removed from the diagnosis of depression – meaning you could be diagnosed and treated for depression just two weeks after a loss if you fulfill the diagnostic criteria.

Mind Hacks