Question

Why are clinican critizing the DSM-5

Answer 1

• They argue that this may increase the number of “mentally ill” individuals and/or pathologize “normal” behavior, and lead to the possibility that thousands—if not millions—of new patients will be exposed to medications which may cause more harm than good.
• The problem is because the D.S.M. is an imperfect guide to predicting what treatments will benefit patients most, a reality tied to the fact that psychiatric diagnoses are based on clinical appearances that tend to cluster, not on the mechanism behind the illness, as is the case with, say, bacterial pneumonia.
• Simply naming a mental illness does not necessarily point the way to effective treatment. This is why patients often qualify for more than one diagnosis, and why many have poor responses to medications.
• Psychiatric assessment is imprecise because the causal systems that drive mental illness are daunting. Dozens of genes contribute to the development of the disorders we call autism, schizophrenia, bipolar illness, severe depression and A.D.H.D. Two people with the same genetic predisposition to mental illness may manifest their conditions differently.
• Because a patient’s clinical picture depends on a jumble of other factors, including childhood adversity, head trauma, life experience and simple chance.
• The D.S.M. offers discrete categories. At the least, these provide a common language practitioners can use to discuss patients.