This month marks the release of the DSM-5, the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Associations’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Changes in the manual will affect millions of Americans – most insurance providers require a DSM diagnosis as a prerequisite for paying for treatment. The following are some of the major revisions…..
New Additions:
1. Hoarding – No longer seen as just a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder, the inability to throw away useless items is now a disorder in its own right.
2. Gambling disorder – Compulsive gambling is now officially treatable as an addiction.
Deletions:
1. Asperger’s syndrome – A group of conditions involving delay of skills, most notably in socializing with others. The symptom profile has been folded into the broader “autism spectrum disorder.”
2. Sex addiction – The term has not been in the manual since 2000, though hypersexuality was still given a diagnosis of “sexual disorder not otherwise specified.” The updated manual will no longer have that diagnosis.
The publication of the new manual has brought a flurry of criticism as well as praise from the psychiatric community. The outgoing American Psychiatry Association president, Dilip Jeste, MD, recently said in response to negative comments, “what we are seeing is a clinical manual based on the best science available… for today’s patients, this is the best manual that we could develop.” Scientific American Mind May/June 2013 Medscape News May 18, 2013