I see chimeracoder has already posted a comment here. Maybe I should plunge in, after looking at the "book review" kindly posted here, to comment on psychiatric nosology (classification of disorders) in general.
Basis of knowledge disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor, and I have never attended even an undergraduate-level course in psychology. On the other hand, I have been reading extensively about psychology for twenty years,[1] mostly focusing on research on human intelligence and human behavior genetics, and over the years my participation in online discussion networks gained me an invitation to participate in the "journal club" (graduate seminar course) on human behavior genetics at my alma mater. At the behavior genetics seminar, I have met several researchers who have been trying to clean up psychiatric nosology and improve the newly released edition of DSM. The researchers I know locally do NOT like the framework or approach of DSM-5. I'll try to do a layman's justice to their point of view in what I write below.
We have discussed before here on HN the blog of the director of the National Institutes of Mental Health, which included a post "Transforming Diagnosis,"[2] casting considerable doubt on the diagnostic approach taken in DSM-5, which was published just before DSM-5 itself was published. Most researchers agree that to develop better understanding of troubles patients experience, and better approaches to treatment, a lot of mental disorders will have to be recategorized (including no longer being categorized as disorders) based on new criteria. That's what the progress of science will look like in this field.
It's important to remember that Freudianism was still in vogue when I was young (and constituted most of the higher education in psychology that my parents received in the early 1950s) and psychology and especially psychiatry are STILL undoing some of the harm caused to those disciplines by mistaken ideas from Sigmund Freud. It's easy to tell persuasive stories about what makes people's minds work, but much harder to test those stories with evidence.
Neurologists who are interested in science-based improvement of medical practice have commented[3] on DSM-5, and comments of that kind point the way forward to improvement of nosology in psychiatry in the future. Therapists may have to give up their pet "specialities" to recognize the realities of how to help patients. There will surely still have to be new diagnostic tests and new drug treatments developed. The DSM-5 didn't do as well as it ought to have to advance understanding of mental disorders. But its evident faults will prompt further research, and DSM-5 will eventually be replaced by a new edition, one I hope will be based on better science.
Basis of knowledge disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor, and I have never attended even an undergraduate-level course in psychology. On the other hand, I have been reading extensively about psychology for twenty years,[1] mostly focusing on research on human intelligence and human behavior genetics, and over the years my participation in online discussion networks gained me an invitation to participate in the "journal club" (graduate seminar course) on human behavior genetics at my alma mater. At the behavior genetics seminar, I have met several researchers who have been trying to clean up psychiatric nosology and improve the newly released edition of DSM. The researchers I know locally do NOT like the framework or approach of DSM-5. I'll try to do a layman's justice to their point of view in what I write below.
We have discussed before here on HN the blog of the director of the National Institutes of Mental Health, which included a post "Transforming Diagnosis,"[2] casting considerable doubt on the diagnostic approach taken in DSM-5, which was published just before DSM-5 itself was published. Most researchers agree that to develop better understanding of troubles patients experience, and better approaches to treatment, a lot of mental disorders will have to be recategorized (including no longer being categorized as disorders) based on new criteria. That's what the progress of science will look like in this field.
It's important to remember that Freudianism was still in vogue when I was young (and constituted most of the higher education in psychology that my parents received in the early 1950s) and psychology and especially psychiatry are STILL undoing some of the harm caused to those disciplines by mistaken ideas from Sigmund Freud. It's easy to tell persuasive stories about what makes people's minds work, but much harder to test those stories with evidence.
Neurologists who are interested in science-based improvement of medical practice have commented[3] on DSM-5, and comments of that kind point the way forward to improvement of nosology in psychiatry in the future. Therapists may have to give up their pet "specialities" to recognize the realities of how to help patients. There will surely still have to be new diagnostic tests and new drug treatments developed. The DSM-5 didn't do as well as it ought to have to advance understanding of mental disorders. But its evident faults will prompt further research, and DSM-5 will eventually be replaced by a new edition, one I hope will be based on better science.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Intellig...
[2] http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...
[3] http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/dsm-5-and-the-fight-for-...