We already had a crisis in psychiatric diagnosis before DSM-5. It is a sure sign of excess that 25 percent of us qualify for a mental disorder and that 20 percent are on psychiatric medication. Unless checked, DSM-5 will open the floodgates and may turn current diagnostic inflation into future...

There are two very different kinds of mistakes that any DSM can make -- bad conceptual choices or bad writing. The big conceptual botches in DSM-5 have been discussed extensively elsewhere and won't be covered again here. These are things like the new diagnoses (e.g. Mild Neurocognitive, Disruptive Mood Dysregulation,...

This past month has been disastrous for mental health. One embarrassment has followed another -- leading to a crisis of confidence that is potentially dangerous for those who rely on psychiatric care.

Most damaging were the negative reviews of DSM-5, the new diagnostic manual. It was justly panned for introducing...

A poorly written DSM criteria set is useless. The essential prerequisite to an accurate diagnosis is that different clinicians can agree on whether it is present or absent in a given individual. If the definition lacks precision, different people will interpret it in their own different and idiosyncratic ways.

The...

The American Psychiatric Association has never once addressed the substantive questions raised about DSM-5. Instead, it has always followed the public relations recommendation to endlessly repeat the same meaningless mantra that many experts worked hard on DSM-5, that it reflects the latest in new science, and that it was the...

The American Psychiatric Association, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the British Psychological Society have all taken their eye off the ball. The potential for exciting neuroscience findings in the future should not distract us from taking much better care of our patients now.

May has been a dispiriting...

The publication of DSM-5 is a sad moment for psychiatry and a risky one for patients. My recommendation for clinicians is simple. Don't use DSM-5 -- there is nothing official about it, nothing especially helpful in it, and all the codes you need for reimbursement are already available for free...

Mental health practitioners and patients are being poorly served by the organizations most entrusted to represent their interests. We have entered a truly remarkable silly season of interacting absurdities committed by the American Psychiatric Association, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the British Psychological Society. May, it turns out,...

The flat out rejection of DSM-5 by National Institute of Mental Health is a sad moment for mental health and an unsafe one for our patients. The APA and NIMH are both letting us down, failing to be safe custodians for the mental health needs of our country.

DSM-5 certainly...

The greatest doctor who ever lived was a very humble guy. Hippocrates is the father of medicine because he introduced the naturalistic conception of disease -- you got sick because your organs weren't working properly -- no spirits, no curses, no angry gods.

But he also set a precious example...

Chronic pain is part of the human condition. Our backs didn't have enough evolutionary time to make the full engineering adjustment to upright posture -- so low back pain is endemic. Because our ancestors didn't often live beyond age 40, natural selection didn't protect us from the pains that so...

The intense level of international interest in DSM 5 is a great surprise. Although DSM has become a research standard around the world, it is rarely used by clinicians outside the US and therefore poses a much lesser threat to their patients.

So why all the prominent newspaper, magazine, TV,...

The clearest lesson we can learn from scientific progress is how much we don't know and perhaps cannot ever know. During the Victorian era, scientists were confident they could predict the behavior of everything from giant galaxies to the smallest atoms from some the simple mathematical rules worked out 200...

DSM-5 sells at a price gouging $200 per copy. The American Psychiatric Association has assumed that it has a fully captive audience of people who will feel compelled to buy DSM-5 for coding and reimbursement purposes -- even if they don't like its contents or cost.

To...

The Obama administration proposes investing $235 million dollars into a new mental health program for our schools that is meant to increase the safety of our children and prevent future Newtowns. The money will train teachers and masters level mental health professionals so that they may detect early...

Accumulating evidence suggests that animals are a lot smarter and humans are a lot dumber than we previously thought.

A recent study shows that the short-term memory of chimpanzees far exceeds what we can expect from ourselves. An average chimp routinely breezes through an experimental memory paradigm that...

The liveliest debate in psychiatry today is where to draw the line between mental disorder and mental health.

So much rides on the decision -- who gets treated and how; who pays for it; whether a criminal is deemed mad or bad; whether someone gets damages in tort cases; who...

Click here to read an original op-ed from the TED speaker who inspired this post and watch the TEDTalk below.

Jon Ronson claims to have a dozen DSM mental disorders. Clearly, he has me beat by very far -- I can diagnose myself with only a...

Unexplained physical symptoms have been part of the human experience for as long as there have been humans.

A great deal of ingenuity has gone into explaining and treating them. The shaman assumed the symptoms were caused by angry spirits, the pagan priests by punishing gods, and monotheistic Job just...

The public revulsion over repeated mass shootings has placed mental health in the spotlight. This is both good and bad.

Bad because focusing on the mentality of the shooter diverts attention away from the lethality of the weapon -- and from the fact that many mass shooters had no history...