The fifth edition of the psychiatrists’ bible, DSM V, reignites the row over the massive growth in mental disorders
By Jeremy Laurance – Health Editor – The Independent – May 17, 2013
It is over 1,000 pages long, has undergone more than three years of revisions and has set doctors at each other’s throats. But the latest version of the psychiatrists’ bible is finally out – to a chorus of criticism that it is pathologising everyday life.
The fifth Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or “DSM 5″ was published by the American Psychiatric Association this week. It is 60 years since the first edition appeared in 1952 , which listed 106 disorders, and the joke is that every time it has been revised it has doubled in size. By the time DSM 4 appeared in 1994 there were 365.
Critics claim the latest edition, which dwarfs its predecessors, will increase again the numbers diagnosed with mental disorders who will be dosed with powerful mind-altering drugs, as well as subtly shifting perceptions of what it is to be normal.
They accuse the authors – a 31 strong taskforce – of medicalising human nature through disease mongering by psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies, eager to create new markets for their treatments. Continue reading


