Critical Look at DSM, or the state of Psychiatry?

(Image source- http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/streams-of-consciousness/files/2012/05/DSM-stack-microscope.jpg)

Below is a video critical to DSM or  Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders considered as house of cards and psychiatry's deadliest scam. It posits that coming up with the list is rather political rather than scientific. The video also accuses the DSM as "pure marketing" for big psycho-pharmaceuticals and insurance companies, more mental disorders more profits. DSM have found its way in courts putting people behind bars, mental institutions, breaking up of families, drugging/medicating children and putting to foster care among others.

Just recently published DSM 5 last May 18, 2013,  also received critical and negative reviews from different individuals and groups. Among of the few links are:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dsm5-in-distress/201212/dsm-5-is-guide-not-bible-ignore-its-ten-worst-changes

http://www.healthnewsreview.org/2012/12/critic-calls-american-psychiatric-assoc-approval-of-dsm-v-a-sad-day-for-psychiatry/


Videos from you tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeEx1MqqE7M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5yBnqc_gWM

The DSM: Psychiatry's Deadliest Scam

 Uploaded on You Tube on Dec 9, 2011

It's psychiatry's best-selling catalog of mental illness — 943 pages long and covering everything from depression and anxiety to stuttering, cigarette addiction, fear of spiders, nightmares, problems with math and even disorder of infancy — all reinterpreted and labeled as a brain disease.

And though it weighs less than five pounds, its influence pervades all aspects of modern society: our governments, our courts, our military, our media and our schools.
Using it, psychiatrists can enforce psychiatric drugging, seize your children and even take away your most precious personal freedoms.

It is psychiatry's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and it is the engine that drives a $330 billion psychiatric industry.

But is there any proof behind the DSM? Or is it nothing more than an elaborate pseudoscientific sham?

 

DSM 

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

Image source - scottdmiller.com

DSM  Timeline


1890 - Emil Kraepelin (Father of Psychiatric Classification)
- dementia praecox (Schizophrenia)
- manic depressive ilness
- paranoid psychosis

1950 - DSM 1
- catalog of mental illnesses
-  listed 112 mental disorders (130 pages long)

1968 - DSM 2
- 178 disorders

1980 - DSM 3
- Robert Spitzer was selected as chairman of the task force
- 259 disorders
- chemical imbalance theory - Dr. Joseph Schildkraut, Professor of Psychiatry

1987 the DSM-III-R
- categories renamed, reorganized, and significant changes in criteria were made

1994 - DSM 4
- 297 disorders in 886 pages
- Dr. Allen Frances, Head of the Task Force

2000 - DSM IV-TR
- "text revision"
-  organized into a five-part axial system
- 374 disorders
- Axis 1  -  clinical disorders
- Axis 2 -  personality disorders and intellectual disabilities.
- other  axes covered medical, psychosocial, environmental, and childhood factors functionally necessary to provide diagnostic criteria for health care assessments.
- category for not otherwise specified
- unspecified mental disorder (?)

2013-  DSM 5

- dropping Asperger syndrome as a distinct classification; loss of subtype classifications for variant forms of schizophrenia; dropping the "bereavement exclusion" for depressive disorders; a revised treatment and naming of gender identity disorder to gender dysphoria, and a new gambling disorder.
- includes hoarding disorder, skin picking, binge eating, internet addiction
- psychosis risk syndrome (preventive pre-psychotic campaign?)

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcuhhJ1BaMk
http://www.psychiatry.org/DSM5


Updated links on DSM 5 

American Psychiatric Association (developer of DSM):
http://www.dsm5.org

British Psychological Society response to DSM-5 consultation:
http://apps.bps.org.uk/_publicationfiles/consultation-responses/DSM-5%202012%20-%20BPS%20response.pdf

Open letter from one of the Divisions of the America Psychological Association
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/dsm5/

Prominent psychiatrist, Allen Frances, critique:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/allen-frances/dsm-5-petition_b_1610569.html