How much of an impact will the DSM-5 have on care in the UK?ĭespite the media hype, the revised classifications in DSM-5 will have limited impact on individuals who receive mental health care in the UK, at least in the short-term. The chair of the taskforce responsible for overseeing the DSM-5 revisions, Dr David Kupfer, said: ‘Our work has been aimed at more accurately defining mental disorders that have a real impact on people’s lives, not expanding the scope of psychiatry’.
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These include conflicting views among experts and the under-diagnosis and over-diagnosis of patients.ĭr Jeste also says that narrowing diagnostic criteria is often blamed for excluding some patients from insurance coverage in the US, yet efforts to diagnose more patients are sometimes criticised for expanding the market for the pharmaceutical industry. That means people with this type of ASD would normally have unaffected intelligence and language development, but would have milder symptoms affecting social interaction, behaviour and language comprehension.Ī message about DSM-5 written by the president of the APA (PDF, 105Kb), Dr Dilip Jeste, touches on the complexities and challenges of revising an established diagnostic system, as reported in the media. In the terminology of the DSM-5 – Asperger's syndrome would be seen as being at the ‘upper end’ of the autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). One (amongst many) of the controversial decisions taken by the panel, made up of over 1,500 mental health experts, involved in drawing up the new draft guidelines, is to remove Asperger's syndrome as a separate diagnosis and replace it within the term ‘ autism spectrum disorder’. This fifth revision, which has been a controversial issue of ongoing debate among psychiatrists and medical ethicists, is due out in May 2013. The DSM is essentially designed to be a ‘user manual to diagnose mental illness’ – providing US psychiatrists with clear definitions of what pattern of symptoms correspond to specific conditions.
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The DSM was first published in 1952 and is often referred to as the 'psychiatrists' bible' in the US. The news is based on a press release from the American Psychiatric Association (APA) announcing the approval by their Board of Trustees of a revised fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). ‘Asperger's syndrome dropped from psychiatrists' handbook’, is the headline in The Guardian.