1

Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness

 4 weeks ago
source link: https://www.wired.com/2010/12/ff-dsmv/
Go to the source link to view the article. You can view the picture content, updated content and better typesetting reading experience. If the link is broken, please click the button below to view the snapshot at that time.

Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness

Allen Frances is worried that the next edition of psychiatry's manual for diagnosing mental illness will take the field “off a cliff.”
Photo Garry Mcleod origami Robert Lang
Photograph: Garry Mcleod; Origami: Robert Lang

Every so often Al Frances says something that seems to surprise even him. Just now, for instance, in the predawn darkness of his comfortable, rambling home in Carmel, California, he has broken off his exercise routine to declare that "there is no definition of a mental disorder. It's bullshit. I mean, you just can't define it." Then an odd, reflective look crosses his face, as if he's taking in the strangeness of this scene: Allen Frances, lead editor of the fourth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (universally known as the DSM-IV), the guy who wrote the book on mental illness, confessing that "these concepts are virtually impossible to define precisely with bright lines at the boundaries." For the first time in two days, the conversation comes to an awkward halt.


About Joyk


Aggregate valuable and interesting links.
Joyk means Joy of geeK