DSM-5 and Psychiatric Diagnosis Inflation

3.5 out of 5 stars The New Crisis in Confidence in Psychiatric Diagnosis. Frances A. Ann Intern Med 2013 May 17 [Epub ahead of print] Full Text Allen Frances, professor emeritus and former chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Duke, has long argued that the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) would be a seriously flawed product. He has much credibility on this issue — perhaps along with some potential bias — since he chaired the task force that produced the previous edition, DSM-IV, in 1992. In this short but interesting article, appearing just as DSM-5 is becoming available, Dr. Frances summarizes his objections. Basically, he argues that DSM-V will accelerate the already alarming trend of psychiatric diagnosis inflation, resulting in an epidemic of false-positive diagnoses and use of unnecessary, potential harmful medications. He points out that this process has been happening at least in the 2 decades since DSM-IV was published: In the past 20 years, the rate of attention-deficit disorder tripled, the rate of bipolar disorder doubled, and the rate of autism had a more than 20-fold increase. DSM-5, Frances contends, will make things much worse: The DSM-5, the recently published firth-edition of the diagnostic manual, ignored this risk and introduced several high-prevalence diagnoses at the fuzzy boundary with normality. With DSM-5, patients worried about having a medical illness will often be diagnosed with somatic sy...
Source: The Poison Review - Category: Toxicology Authors: Tags: Medical allen frances diagnostic inflation dsm-5 Source Type: news