LPN to RN Blog

Some mental health experts have expressed concern over recent revisions of the bible of of psychiatric disorders – the Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), a tome published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). The manual is revised every few years, and the latest edition is set to come out in 2013.

Reuters reportedthat in the manual are new, more ambivalent diagnostic classifications such as "psychosis risk syndrome," "mild anxiety depression," and "temper dysregulation disorder." These supposedly "new" disorders are so vague and their symptoms so common that some fear the bounds of normality will be shrunk to the point that everyone can be classified as "crazy."

What’s more, exhibiting these symptoms may lead some who seek help to believe that they need psychiatric treatment, which will lead to a spike in the demand for medication. Critics of big pharmacy companies have continually argued that psychiatric medications are so ubiquitous that some medications and conditions may exist only to further the industry.

On the other side, however, an op-edin the New York Times asserted that overmedication is largely an oversold media frenzy, and that the actual numbers of people who are prescribed or demand unnecessary psychiatric medication are few or insubstantial.

Whatever the case, the fact still stands that the popularly excepted lexicon of mental illness has expanded as more and more people are now open to discussing mental illness publicly. While this openness has certainly done much to remove the stigma of mental disorders, it has also created an environment in which general anxiety levels caused by simply living can be considered a sign of illness. This then may give rise to a cultural climate in which accepted norms are altogether unattainable.

The Reuters report quoted Til Wykes of the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College London, who expressed concern over the DSM revisions. He noted: "It’s leaking into normality. It is shrinking the pool of what is normal to a puddle."

In any event, despite the possibly ill-advised changes being made to the bible of psychiatric diagnoses, the APA created the DSM for doctors to use only as a guideline and not at all as a quick diagnostic tool. If psychiatrists use the manual correctly, then there does not necessarily exist an eminent danger of wholesale misdiagnoses.