Laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made. Otto von Bismarck German Prussian politician (1815 – 1898) The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published periodically by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), aims to catalog all recognized mental disorders. As the name implies, it is used both for clinical […]
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I met a young man recently in a setting having nothing to do with psychiatry or mental health. He politely introduced himself and tried to learn the names of the others around him. He seemed socially awkward but inoffensive, and after I left I didn’t give the encounter much thought. However, I learned that soon […] Around the time I was finishing medical school I published a short essay on subjectivity in psychiatric assessment. The American Psychiatric Association had released the third edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual just a few years before. When it came out in 1980, DSM-III was a revolutionary update: It provided specific criteria for diagnosing […] |
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