06-02-2011, 06:10 PM
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#1 (permalink)
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The Reforms
Location: Rarely, if ever, here or there, but always in transition
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[Read of Interest] Psychiatric disorders: what belongs in the Mental Illness Lexicon?
excerpt: (prologue)
Quote:
Psychiatrists are in the thick of a years-long effort to produce the latest edition of the essential textbook for diagnosing mental illnesses, the DSM. They're dogged by controversies over 'new' conditions.
The first revision in almost 20 years will roll off the presses in 2013. Since the 1994 edition, research has exposed pieces of the biological framework underlying disorders like schizophrenia, anorexia and depression. But molecular tests and brain scans based on those discoveries aren't yet ready for diagnostic use, and that leaves the authors of the upcoming book with the same problem that vexed their predecessors: how to distinguish a mental illness from the rainbow of normal human behavior.
Much of the discussion at the American Psychiatric Assn. meeting centered on fears that, without solid scientific evidence, additions or deletions in their new bible of mental health could do more harm than good.
"The brain is so darn complicated," said Dr. David Axelson, director of the Child and Adolescent Bipolar Services program at the Western Psychiatric Institute in Pittsburgh.
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As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the Atomic Age) as in being able to remake ourselves. —Mohandas K. Gandhi
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![[Read of Interest] Psychiatric disorders: what belongs in the Mental Illness Lexicon?](/tfp/iconimages/found-net/read-interest-psychiatric-disorders-what-belongs-mental-illness-lexicon_ltr.gif)
