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The American Psychiatric Association, for the past 62 years, has put out a diagnostic and statistical manual that, today, is neither diagnostic nor a manual. From the second edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-II; American Psychiatric Association, 1968) through the fifth edition (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013), the volume has grown about 10-fold and is laden with symptom lists and statistics. Perhaps its new name might have been An Index of Psychological Phenomenological Compilations with Comments of a Statistical-Epidemiological Nature.
In what follows, I briefly go over the history of problems regarding diagnosis, discuss the DSM-5, review the above two publications, and share my perspectives on diagnosis and treatment selection.
The DSM-5 has been “accepted by” (read: “used by”) insurance companies for reimbursement purposes and been referenced in statistical research. Also, in some court opinions, the DSM has been requisite to avoid Daubert (1993) challenges to expert testimony,1 - although the DSM-5 cautions against its use in legal proceedings. The DSM-5 does provide names for groupings of patients' complaints.
Frances (2013) exculpated the authors of the 947-page DSM-5 by stating that it is perhaps too long. Frances's impressive version is about 200 pages, outlined, and includes quite a bit of common sense. Although he retains the decimal points and the strained