Psychiatrists From Another Dimension (Part 1)

Remember DSM-5? After all the criticisms, the street protests and the scholarly debates, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders was finally published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in May 2013. And then... well, that was it. The launch itself was a something of an anticlimax - as I predicted in 2010, "When DSM-5 does arrive... it will be a non-event. By then the debates will have happened." But now a strange story is emerging that could reignite the controversy. First some background: one of the main claimed innovations in the DSM-5 is that it promotes the use of 'dimensional' or quantitative measures of symptoms. Traditionally the DSM has been about all-or-nothing, categorical diagnoses ("He is depressed", "She has schizophrenia"). The 5th edition, for the first time, also recommends the use of severity scales. It's a move away from digital and in the direction of analogue - such is progress in psychiatry.