By Prudence L. Gourguechon on 3/30/2010 11:25 AM
The deadline for comments on the DSM-V is April 20. For those interested in the future of mental health in all its manifestations it's well worth taking the time to offer comments to the official APA site that is accepting them.
In a major opinion piece in the March 2010 issue of the news magazine Clinical Psychiatry, Paul Fink emphasizes the consequences that follow from the DSM and any of its revisions, some of them positive and some negative. Personally, his passions go towards opposing the inclusion of diagnoses such as Parental Alienation Syndrome, and he also bemoans the elimination of removing the diagnosis of Asberger's syndrome, as, to Fink and to many of us, such a change will have very unfortunate consequences for, well, individuals with Asberger's syndrome.
I was pleased to see that Fink made prominent mention of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (PDM) and describes it as a joint effort of many of the senior analysts in America. Fink specifically describes it as a joint effort of the American Psychoanalytic Association, the International Psychoanalytical Association, the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry, the division of psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association, and the National Membership Committee on Psychoanalysis in Clincial Social work (now called the American Association of Psychoanalytic Clinical Social Work). I repeat this list because of the pride and pleasure it gives me to recognize again this collaborative effort of the major American psychoanalytic organizaitons.
Clearly, Dr. Fink values the PDM approach (and he was a contributing author). He recalls, "I was shocked by the number of ways we found to describe things that go on inside of a person. None of it is in previous DSMs" [emphasis added]
He explains, "the PDM opens up a lot of ideas about what a patient with a given illness feels, thinks and senses...Its approach to mental illness is dimensional rather than categorical"
Nevertheless, the DSM is a fact of life, and the DSMV revision will happen, and will effect psychiatry, psychotherapy, psychoanalytic practice, and health care economics and delivery systems whether we like it or not.
There is still time to comment on the specifics of the draft DSM V proposal. But not much time. The deadline for comments is April 20. The American Psychiatric Association has set up an excellent site to help you organize your comments and submit them.
To submit comments on the DSMV draft, go to www.dsm5.org. Register as a new user and you will be given a password.
The draft disorders and disorder criteria that have been proposed by the DSM-5 Work Groups can be found on the the dsm5.org pages. A set of links are provided where you can read about proposed changes to the disorders that interest you.
APsaA members may want to visit the community of interest called DSMV in the members section of the APsaA homepage.
http://apsa.org/Member_Section/Communities_of_Interest/afv/topicsview/aff/16.aspx
At that site you will find background articles and essays, a list of topics you might want to comment on, and a repeat of this information on how to submit comments. |