Comments on: All Revolutions are Plotted in Secret

By: Once You Click, Can You Quit? | Culture11 - World of Psychology

Once You Click, Can You Quit? | Culture11 - World of Psychology — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 22:05:55 +0000

[…] disorders according to what little information we have on the upcoming book (the DSM-V is being assembled in secret, so it’s pretty hard to tell what the heck they are doing over […]

By: wayne

wayne — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 02:20:23 +0000

As a clinical psychologist I’m frustrated by the lack of peer review on the DSM V. Describing the closed method of it’s development and design as “bad science and bad policy” borders on generous.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:15:47 +0000

It’s worth listening to this NPR “This American Life” program about how homosexuality was reclassified in the DSM-IV:

http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=204

Truly enlightening.

If you listen, you’ll note that the change wasn’t based on any new developments in scientific understanding, any surveys, any new hypothesis, any tests, any research…just pure social policy as decided by a select, highly focused and self-interested small group of folks in lab coats. Their revision of the DSM-IV was subsequently relied on by the SCOTUS in Lawrence v. Texas and has impacted what may and may not be declared illegal in this country. If they had not made their revision based on a change in social understanding (emphatically not scientific understanding), it is possible if not probable that Lawrence v. Texas would have gone the other way.

…Which isn’t the typical understanding of how a democratic republic is supposed to work, but YMMV.

By: K

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 23:50:39 +0000

Could the secrecy involve Big Pharma, which also stands likely to gain financially if the scope of use for psychiatric drugs is expanded?

By: VMS

VMS — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 17:54:18 +0000

DSM III (in my opinion) was the best version that was published, and contained true psychiatric disorders. It is nowhere near as thick as DSM IV and DSM IV-TR (text revision). DSM-IV and DSM IV-TR appear to greatly expand the number of psychiatric diagnoses. A possible explanation for this great expansion is to increase the number of diagnostic codes for the pecuniary interest of the psychiatric profession. There is no way that dozens of “new” disorders suddenly cropped up in the time that DSM III was first published to the time DSM IV superseded it.

By: Orval

Orval — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 00:43:00 +0000

The thing is, no matter how much they dress it up and academicize it and put this and that policy in, the fact remains that this ain’t science, it is educated opinion at best, and frequently, judging from history, rank prejudice or lemming-like cult fashion train thinking at worst. And the fact that is shows up on a legal blog, because it has such immense legal impacts, pretty much undercuts the futility and danger of the whole enterprise.

If it were actually scientific, it might have real value in terms of justice. As a codification of opinion and prejudice and current fad, it has quite the opposite, no matter what the process used to develop it. The thing itself is wrong, no matter how derived.

By: Ken

Ken — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:09:44 +0000

I took a law and psychiatry class from Dr. Alan Stone, who sat on one of the committees framing one of the iterations of the DSM. At the time, I had recently read Susan Faludi’s Backlash. (Honesty compels me to admit that my motives were carnal, though it would up being a fascinating book, even though I did not agree with a lot of it.) Anyway, in the class, I questioned Dr. Stone about some of the claims that Faludi makes — basically that the process of selecting and defining disorders for inclusion in the DSM are rather unscientific. (As I recall, the example was a female committee member saying “oh, but I do that,” leading the group to conclude that the thing could therefore not be part of a pathology). Dr. Stone was willing to discuss the process, but was rather notably unable to offer a convincing explanation of why I should view the selection process as principled rather than idiosyncratic.