10-14-2008 National:
Overhaul of diagnostic bible shrouded in secrecy
It's a tried-and-true formula:
1. Do a quick-and-dirty study or two.
2. Find a huge, perhaps escalating, problem that has heretofore been overlooked.
3. Create a product label (aka diagnosis).
And, voila! The drug companies will take it from there. A diagnosis that was once just a twinkle in the eye of a creative researcher becomes reified as a concrete entity.
Over the past couple of decades, the DSM has risen from its humble origin to an object of worship, regarded as the absolute scientific truth. Privately, however, many mental health professionals refer to it as a "joke." That's partly because we are aware of studies showing the poor validity of many of its constructs. It's also because we know about some of the forces (in addition to scientific progress) that influence each new edition. These include internal turf wars (the DSM-III was developed in large part to decrease the power of the psychoanalytic wing of psychiatry), cultural fads, group-think, and outside lobbying. And leading the outside lobbying, of course, is the pharmaceutical industry.
For the remainder of this excellent commentary on the DMS-V please visit "In the News" by Karen Franklin.
