We have been following the process of writing the DSM, which will establish the new diagnostic criteria for psychiatric disorders, through the DSM-5 Shadow Team. One of the diagnoses that has been proposed is internet addiction disorder. This is apparently an addition to disorders for addictions to sex, food, gambling, whatever you name it, but we don’t have time to cover everything. Fact is it is pretty hard to know what they are doing as the head of DSM-5, David Kupfer MD, has required all members to sign a nondisclosure agreement and not take any notes. He runs a pretty tight ship.
The behavior of the committee members has gotten pretty mean and nasty, and the DSM Anxiety Disorders, OCD, PTSD and Dissociative Disorders committee retaliated against me for writing about the DSM here. I mean, those dudes are pretty thin skinned. And what would you think about a bunch of guys that signs a confidentiality agreement before they even know what they are getting into?
One of the diagnoses on the table is Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD), a “disease” that if accepted would surely drive the drug companies to “identify and treat” these poor lassies with drugs like the testosterone patch (see “Wow A Drug To Have Sex Once More a Month? Sign Me Up!”) or whatever psychotropic they could drug out of the medicine cabinet.
After yesterday’s post on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) process “Retaliations and Beware of the Consequences” blew through the roof for record page views and stimulated similar confessions from other psychiatric bloggers about bullying by members of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), as well other commentary here and here and [...]
The work on DSM-5 has, so far, displayed an unhappy combination of soaring ambition and remarkably weak methodology.
