Psychiatrists rewriting the mental health bible

June 5, 2009

Is the compulsion to hoard things a mental disorder? How about the practice of eating excessively at night?

And what of Internet addiction: Should it be diagnosed and treated?

As the clock ticks toward the release of the most influential of mental health textbooks, psychiatrists are asking themselves thousands of complex and sometimes controversial questions. The answers will determine how Americans’ mental health is assessed, diagnosed and treated.

Over the next 18 months, psychiatrists will hammer out a draft of the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Assn.’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, more commonly called DSM-V. Nowhere have the discussions been more heated, the ramifications most vividly foretold, than here at the organization’s annual meeting.

Some psychiatrists warn that the tome runs the risk of medicalizing the normal range of human behaviors; others vehemently argue that it must be broad enough to guide treatment of those who need it.

Read Article: Los Angeles Times

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