International DSM-5 Response Committee to campaign to block DSM’s May release

[HereSince1628]

After many years in the making and a raft of controversies that spilled in the popular press, the final approval for publication of the new Diagnostic and Statistical manual (DSM-V) occurred in Nov 2012. It is to be released on May 20th 2013

Several paragraphs into a CNN report on over-diagnosis of mental illness Katti Gray refers to a campaign to be launched against the release of the DSM-5. Meh on the overdiagnosis but wow to the story of a campaign to stop the new DSM that seems like a bit of news:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/16/health/mental-illness-overdiagnosis/index.html

<Snip>
The International DSM-5 Response Committee -- named after the upcoming fifth incarnation of that diagnostic manual -- plans to launch a campaign next month aimed at blocking the manual's May 20 release. Short of that, critics plan to press ahead with their case that the DSM-5 should be viewed with some skepticism and not wholly embraced by practitioners or patients.

"We believe that there is now overwhelming evidence that DSM-5 is scientifically unsound (and) statistically unreliable," said clinical psychologist Peter Kinderman, director of the University of Liverpool's Institute of Psychology, Health and Society. He is helping organize the international campaign with petition drives in the United States, the United Kingdom and France.
The American Psychiatric Association, whose manual has been used by health insurers, pharmaceutical companies, doctors and other clinicians since it first published in 1952, has dismissed DSM-5 opponents as overly alarmed.
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I'm sure most of us have never heard of this committee or it's stance in opposition to the new DSM

The following is from the International DSM-5 response committee’s statement of concern posted on the website of the Associazione Italiana di Psicologia (aipass.org). The Italian Association of Psychology is on the APA’s list of national psychology associations.
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http://www.aipass.org/files/Statement_of_concern_IDRC.pdfnse committee’s statement of concern:
<snip>

We believe that there is now overwhelming evidence that DSM-5:

•Is the result of a secretive, closed, and rushed process that put publishing profits ahead of public welfare;
•Is in many places scientifically unsound and statistically unreliable, and did not receive a much needed and widely requested external scientific review;
•Is clinically risky because of many new and untested diagnoses and lowered diagnostic thresholds
•Will result in the mislabeling of mental illness in people who will do better without a psychiatric diagnosis
•Will result in unnecessary and potentially harmful treatment with psychiatric medication;
•Will divert precious mental health resources away from those who most need them.

[littlemissmartypants]

1. LMSP kicking...n/t

[Newest Reality]

2. But ... but ...

what about the profits? If everybody can be found to be mentally ill, then imagine the income potential there for the-rapists and pharmaceutical companies.

Did they list: Obsessive Diagnostic and Statistical Over-diagnosis Disorder in DSM-5? Having read a bit about what they were deciding to include, well, it fits.

If they do publish this one, I would expect that DSM-6 will be something like a World Book Encyclopedia in scope.

Hey man, being human ain't normal, and some of us are more abnormal than others. However, I have yet to find out just what normal, (a normal anything) really is.

[HereSince1628]

3. IMO the release of the DSM-V is pretty much certain.

It's being published by a the APA, a private organization, by a private publisher.

There is a lot of concern in the public about over-pathologizing expression of cognition, emotion or behavior that are 'typical'. It's unclear if that concern is more about things like becoming exploited by clinicians trying to sweep in clients, or whether that concern of the public is a fear of becoming labelled/stigmatized.