The American Psychiatric Association is set to approve a new version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the Holy Bible of practicing psychologists, this spring.  It’s the fifth such major revision and by far the most controversial.

DSM 5 adds hundreds of new diagnoses.  Going by this book, almost everybody in America is mentally ill; most of us should be on medication, too.  Following are a few issues raised by Dr. Allen Frances, MD.   He was chair of the DSM 4 Task Force and is a professor emeritus at Duke University.

This is, of course, excellent news for the gun control activists.  Now they will have a dozen reasons to lock up anybody for any reason anytime they want to. 

You can read his full article here, at the Psychology Today website.

Continue reading this link( here) at : DSM 5 Is Guide Not Bible—Ignore Its Ten Worst Changes

First part of link:

This is the saddest moment in my 45 year career of studying, practicing, and teaching psychiatry. The Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association has given its final approval to a deeply flawed DSM 5 containing many changes that seem clearly unsafe and scientifically unsound. My best advice to clinicians, to the press, and to the general public - be skeptical and don't follow DSM 5 blindly down a road likely to lead to massive over-diagnosis and harmful over-medication. Just ignore the ten changes that make no sense.

Brief background. DSM 5 got off to a bad start and was never able to establish sure footing. Its leaders initially articulated a premature and unrealizable goal- to produce a paradigm shift in psychiatry. Excessive ambition combined with disorganized execution led inevitably to many ill conceived and risky proposals.

These were vigorously opposed. More than fifty mental health professional associations petitioned for an outside review of DSM 5 to provide an independent judgment of its supporting evidence and to evaluate the balance between its risks and benefits. Professional journals, the press, and the public also weighed in- expressing widespread astonishment about decisions that sometimes seemed not only to lack scientific support but also to defy common sense.

DSM 5 has neither been able to self correct nor willing to heed the advice of outsiders. It has instead created a mostly closed shop- circling the wagons and deaf to the repeated and widespread warnings that it would lead to massive misdiagnosis. Fortunately, some of its most egregiously risky and unsupportable proposals were eventually dropped under great external pressure (most notably 'psychosis risk', mixed anxiety/depression, internet and sex addiction, rape as a mental disorder, 'hebephilia', cumbersome personality ratings, and sharply lowered thresholds for many existing disorders). But APA stubbornly refused to sponsor any independent review and has given final approval to the ten reckless and untested ideas that are summarized below.

"1) Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder: DSM 5 will turn temper tantrums into a mental disorder- a puzzling decision based on the work of only one research group. We have no idea whatever how this untested new diagnosis will play out in real life practice settings, but my fear is that it will exacerbate, not relieve, the already excessive and inappropriate use of medication in young children.

2) Normal grief will become Major Depressive Disorder, thus medicalizing and trivializing our expectable and necessary emotional reactions to the loss of a loved one and substituting pills and superficial medical rituals for the deep consolations of family, friends, religion, and the resiliency that comes with time and the acceptance of the limitations of life.

Continue reading at:  http://beforeitsnews.com/health/2013/02/youre-mentally-deranged-eve...