Diagnosing mental disorders and saving the normal

Excerpt

In May 2013 the American Psychiatric Association finally released the 5th edition of its famous Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (short title: DSM-5). The manual had been on its way for 14 years, accompanied with high expectations as well as heavy critique from the very beginning. It is certainly a bit strange that an update of a diagnostic manual for mental disorders receives so much attention all over the world. But the way psychiatry has developed since 1980, when the path breaking DSM-III was published paving the way for a “new diagnostic psychiatry,” explains the hype. As Robert Spitzer, the chairman of DSM-III, said in an interview about the interest in DSM already in the 1980s: “It’s amazing. I guess it defines things. Why do people get so upset when they have arguments about diagnosis? I guess because it defines what is the reality”. To sum up: DSM makes things come into existence. Not a small thing for a diagnostic manual to do! Spitzer is quoted in a very nice little collection of papers attempting to analyze and evaluate the DSM-movement and its most recent result: Making the DSM-5: Concepts and Controversies, edited by Joel Paris and James Phillips (Paris and Phillips 2013: 17).¹ …