DSM: ‘Bible’ or a ‘true’ Apocrypha?

The first two weeks of the month of February were abuzz with the news — carefully rehearsed and timely released by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) — that advanced "beta" copies of the forthcoming final edition of DSM-V were up for sales and evaluation.

In preparation for their most recent "Big Bang" the APA offers a website where the various proposed new diagnostic categories, being considered for inclusion on DSM-V, are listed for review, suggestions and/or comments.

Apocrypha

The following is what you will find if you visit this site:  www.dsm5.org.

Proposed Draft Revisions to DSM Disorders and Criteria 

The draft disorders and disorder criteria that have been proposed by the DSM-5 Work Groups can be found on these pages.  Use the links below to read about proposed changes to the disorders that interest you.  Please note that the proposed criteria listed here are not final.  These are initial drafts of the recommendations that have been made to date by the DSM-5 Work Groups.  Viewers will be able to submit comments until April 20, 2010. After that time, this site will be available for viewing only.

The important thing at this point is that numerous clinicians have begun capitalizing in the pre-sales "fever" for this manual, having published numerous books that portend an enormous success for this so-called "Bible" of the psychiatrists.

Redoubtable "bible"

Our position and reasons to be skeptical with all the hoopla

Over the years we have leveled criticisms to all the previous DSM-ETC manuals, aiming our attacks specifically at the most current, DSM-IV, which under the direction of Robert Spitzer became a forerunner of the future bulky manual, whose dimensions will expand, no doubt, to meet the requirement of the moment.

The history of DSM-ETC

As an idea, DSM-I was published for the first time in 1952, sponsored by the APA.

It consisted of an adaptation of a previous classification adopted in 1918 by the US Census Bureau for its internal use, for the use of the government psychiatric hospitals and for its application to the branches of the military medical services.

DSM-I then, only had 130 pages, and 106 diagnostic categories.

DSM-II made its debut in 1968, with 182 listed diagnostic categories in 134 pages.

Up until then, both manuals revealed the hegemony of the hold that at that at the time, psychoanalysis had on American psychiatry.

In both manuals symptoms did not receive special attention as part of specific disorders, being considered as mere faulty adaptations to the demands and realities of everyday living.

These flawed adaptations were distinguished among them in terms of severity, establishing progressive gradations in a continuum from mild neurotic symptoms to psychosis at the end of the line.

In other words, mental illnesses were one and the same in a matter of gradations.

Despite the inclusion of biological and psychological elements, the schema proposed by DSM resulted in a model that failed to delineate with any precision the differences that exist between abnormality and normalcy.

In 1974, the decision was made to make a new revision of DSM and Robert Spitzer was chosen to lead the Task Force.

The initial idea was to make the US nomenclature consistent with ICD (International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related health Problems), published by World Health Organization (WHO).

WHO

But, under Spitzer steering, the Project acquired a much broader purpose and a more ambitious goal.

From its inception the objective of improving the reliability of psychiatric diagnosis was established, since the different diagnostic categories between professionals and countries were different.

Similarly, an effort was made to turn DSM into a "research" tool.

For the latter purpose a multiaxial system was introduced, as part of a project aimed at making a more accurate determination of the patient"s condition, instead of limiting the scope of diagnosing to a simple formulation with the resulting label.

Another objective consisted in making the diagnostic formulation based on description, with a total exclusion of the psychoanalytic model in favor of a biomedical mold, wherein the interfaces of what"s normal and abnormal are differentiated.

The criteria adopted for the definition of many psychiatric disorders were adapted and amplified from the RDC (Research and Diagnostic Criteria) of John Feighner et al. formulated at Washington University in St. Louis, already in existence since the 1970s.

It was not a peaceful period for DSM and its new architects. Many internecine territorial fights were contested in silence, between those who were trying to appease the various contending camps in psychiatry.

The major hurdle was created by the outright elimination of the concept of neurosis, which forms a cornerstone of psychoanalytical theory.

In many ways resemble the various churches struggling to maintain control of the dogma for themselves alone.

And in that particular sense DSM is a "bible", because is based more on faith than science.

A final compromise was able to arrange a truce, and the hostilities ceased through some accommodations achieved discretely by means of the application of euphemisms between parentheses, modifying some conflicting or controversial categories.

Finally, DSM-III was published in 1980, with a growth to 449 pages and containing between its covers a list of 256 diagnostic categories.

Although our species had not undergone tangible mutations, the mental illness that feed on us have grown and multiplied, perhaps as result of biblical inspiration.

DSM tremendous circulation was amazing and for many of their devout enthusiasts and apologists qualified as a "true revolution" in the field of psychiatry.

Enthusiasm that later proved exaggerated, premature, and — more than anything else — unwarranted.

In 1987 DSM-III-R was published as a revision of DSM-III, under the direction of the indefatigable Robert Spitzer.

In this new edition many categories were reorganized, others received new names, and significant changes in all the diagnostic criteria were implemented.

Six categories were disposed off and new ones were added.

Some controversial labels — as were dysphoric premenstrual disorder and masochistic personality disorder — were discarded among the notable modifications made.

Now, DSM-III-R boasted 292 diagnostics and 567 pages of text.

DSM-IV

DSM-IV was published in 1994, with 297 diagnostic categories contained in 886 pages.

Now the Task Force had a new chairman in psychiatrist Allen Frances.

An Orientation Committee was installed made up by 27 persons, including four clinical psychologists.

Of singular importance in this stage was the new requirement that the diagnostic categories had to establish, as part of the assessment, the degree of disturbance any condition caused on the occupational, social and other significant areas of the patient"s functioning.

True psychiatric diagnosis

In the year 2000, a text revision was completed, today known as DSM-IV-TR.

The diagnostic categories remained intact. The only major progress was in trying to maintain consistence with ICD.

DSM: Homosexuality as a diagnosis and the politics of psychiatry

During the years 1972 and 1973 gay activists protesting the inclusion of homosexuality in DSM targeted for disruption the annual APA conferences, creating so much havoc that the objective they were after was thoroughly achieved.

Talk about fighting for one"s convictions and for what"s deemed right and correct

Then DSM-II promptly excluded homosexuality as a diagnosis, evolving to what today is known as "sexual disorder not otherwise specified", category that stresses that the victim suffers "persistent and pronounced anguish about his sexual orientation".

So much for that, as a wishy-washy compromise and an erroneous assumption.

Understanding DSM-IV

DSM-IV is a classification system based on the use of categories. The categories themselves are prototypes, so that a patient that approaches any one prototype is considered victim of the disorder to which he comes close.

DSM-IV establishes that "there are no conjectures that each category of mental disorder is a complete entity well delineated and delimited with precise characteristics…"

But, despite the grandiose and unsubstantiated assumption made in the above paragraph, it goes on to admit that overlapping may exist between categories.

Qualifiers are used with inordinate frequency determining mild, moderate and severe forms in each diagnostic category.

The interference with the individual normal functioning must be specified in detail; although this requirement has been eliminated from the tics and some of the paraphilias.

Each category has a distinctive number that qualifies it for (the most important requirement) the use by medical insurers and for "administrative purposes" whatever that might mean.

Psychiatric diagnosis

The multiaxial system

DSM-IV organizes each diagnostic group within five tiers or axes that relate to different aspects of the disorder and its impact on the individual.

Note: Because this classification can be obtained with relative ease from many internet sites, we will not provide the reader with a detailed description of the axes.

Warnings

The APA is eager to instruct those who get their hands on this — their "Bible" — that these manuals were not published for the uninitiated or for the general public, but that they were intended to facilitate the labors of specialized professionals in the sciences of human behavior.

Warnings about the warnings

While the APA gives us its well intended caveats about the use of the manual, at the same time continues promoting its sales for the use of all kinds of professionals and for all kinds of purposes, some of them quite controversial as we will see later.

As it happens with the other — the "real" Bible — the one the clerics and their colleagues of the cloth use, one must be supervised to read what, in essence is a rather simplistic and mechanical manual.

See how some might use it

Dr. Edward F. upon seeing his first anorexic case that I referred to him, casts a word of doubt as to the correctness of the diagnosis.

Here are his reasons, armed with DSM:

"She did not pass the DSM test. I asked if she had a distorted body image and she said no to this

"Then I asked if she used denial in her situation and she also said no

"I think she is faking it".

They also have an important analogy to make, and that is that the manual is not to be used as a cookbook, although it is written as such.

Psychiatric diagnosis

But with the publication of the manual, unlike what happens with the Bible, the matters of dogma are never settled, and new sales begin.

In addition to the manual, the APA publishes four sourcebooks that serve the purpose of lending some needed scientific semblance to their manual.

Future plans already envisioned for DSM-V

The new "bible" in the current vernacular, is programmed to appear in 2012 or 2013.

Meanwhile six different groups are at work in its perfection, with other side groups also involved to achieve the final objective and structure.

Detailed descriptions of the role and functions of these groups are contained on my various articles on the subject.

Criticisms of DSM

A literature review and visits to some internet sites reveal that DSM, despite its relatively good standing, does not receive much endorsement or support from some important detractors.

Here are some of the main criticisms:

• That the diagnostic validity of DSM-IV categories are exaggerated and lack documentation

• That as a system makes distinctions between the various categories that are not factually supported

• That the application of a diagnostic system based on a compilation of symptoms leaves outside the scope of its considerations important details about the understanding of the individual patient (vide supra the case of Dr. Edward F.)

• The political aspect of DSM presents an important argument by itself, specifically its use and applications by medical insurers and drug manufacturers. The conflict of interests is a matter of the greatest importance, since more than 50% of the professionals active in the structuring of all DSMs since their inception maintain close ties with the companies that manufacture pharmacological agents for use in psychiatry.

Recently there has been a deluge of reactions that originate from respected academics who seriously doubt the value and relevance of DSM in all its permutations and forms.

Psychiatric diagnosis

Proceeding with this thesis

In order to maintain themselves current and viable, the architects of DSM-ETC have to reinvent themselves, that"s the reason why I use "ETC" to qualify the number on its editions, because we can expect that it will be revised for as long as there are buyers.

And buyers there will be, for as long as the "bible" can be pressed to serve their goals.

Let"s take two diagnostic categories creating teacup storms ahead of DSM-V.

The families of children victims of Asperger"s who want their category to remain included so that they can continue to derive, otherwise withheld insurance benefits, and the new champions of orthorexia that are anxious to have healthful eating included as a diagnosis.

But, let"s examine one of the current diagnoses included under the rubric of eating disorders.

We are referring to the melodious sounding EDNOS.

Here is what"s all about:

Ednos. In the current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), it encompasses virtually every type of eating problem that is not anorexia or bulimia.

Psychiatric diagnosis

Though its name is less familiar, it is diagnosed more often than those two disorders — in 4 percent of American women each year, according to the National Eating Disorders Association. (The association does not have statistics on men.)

Subsets of Ednos include binge eating disorder, purging disorder, night eating syndrome, chewing and spitting out food, and even picky eating.

But the diagnosis baffles many clinicians, who call it ambiguous, vague and unwieldy. And so the American Psychiatric Association is overhauling its definition of Ednos for the next edition of the diagnostic manual, known as DSM-V, to be published in 2013.

"The consensus is that Ednos is "too big," meaning it is being used more frequently than is desirable, as that label does not convey much specific information," said the chairman of the eating disorders work group for the new manual.

Adding, the panel was "considering a range of ways to reduce the frequency with which that very broad category is used." For now, though, Ednos remains as the nation"s most common eating disorder. A September 2009 study in The International Journal of Eating Disorders found that Ednos was often a way station between an eating disorder and recovery or, less commonly, from recovery to a full-blown eating disorder.

While traveling with a scale in your backpack is not one of the criteria, preoccupation with weight and food is. So are severe chronic dieting, frequent overeating, night eating syndrome, purging disorder and possibly compulsive exercising.

Psychiatric diagnosis

If all that sounds a little vague — find one woman who isn"t preoccupied with her body size — psychologists make a distinction.

"The eating has to be disordered in some way, as does the behavior relating to eating," said a professor of psychology at Montana State University. "Also, it has to lead to some kind of impairment. For instance, some women will not go to parties because they"re worried about eating.

"If you"re restricting yourself so much that it affects your work negatively, you would meet the criteria for Ednos."

Even so, many clinicians say the diagnosis is just too roomy.

"One of the difficulties with Ednos is that there"s a lot of diversity within that category," said another expert, director of an eating disorders program.

"Because there are different presentations that not all clinicians are familiar with, there"s a risk that people who have disordered eating who could benefit from clinical attention won"t know that they have a problem."

Indeed, one reason the panel wants to change the guidelines is to help patients with eating problems recognize them even if they do not exhibit any of the traditional symptoms.

So that they direct their attention to seek reimbursement for "treatment" or for "medicines to cure it".

Kris, for example, used laxatives and restricted her food for years, but she never threw up or binged, and her weight was average. She did not seek psychiatric help for what she and her husband called her "eating problem" until age 31, when she became addicted to the diet pill ephedra, she said in a recent interview.

Psychiatric diagnosis

Now 37 and the director of a child care center in Atlanta, Kris said that when she finally got her diagnosis of Ednos, "it was like, Ah, I am sick enough to get help and have the recovery experience." 

Most health insurance policies do not cover Ednos. (Kris refinanced her home to pay for her week-and-a-half-long stay at a residential treatment center.) Yet people with it are at risk for many of the same medical problems that afflict anorexics or bulimics, including osteoporosis, heart attacks, hormone imbalance and even death. A study in the Oct. 15 issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry reported that the mortality rate associated with Ednos exceeded that for anorexia nervosa and bulimia.

Not due to severity, but due to the greater frequency with which Ednos is now being applied.

With that in mind, many doctors blur the diagnostic lines just so their patients can get insurance coverage. A chewer and spitter might be classified as bulimic, another expert said; an almost-anorexic would fall under binge eating disorder.

Clinicians say patients like these often need to feel they have a "real" eating disorder.

A great number of patients feel this stigma if they know they"re diagnosed with Ednos: "Obviously, I"m not good enough to be anorexic," said another expert consulted. "I"ve had many patients feel that they need to lose more weight so they lose their period so they can change the diagnosis. Patients really feel they have to get "better" at their eating disorder to deserve treatment."

That is how Stacey felt. Stacey, 26, a prekindergarten teacher in Alexandria, LA, said she had been dieting since age 7; at 16, she lost 70 pounds, and from then until age 25 she purged and abused diet pills, diuretics and laxatives. Although she vomited 3 to 11 times a day, she was never classified as bulimic because she did not binge, and her weight was never low enough to be anorexic.

Psychiatric diagnosis

"The doctors would look at me and say, "You don"t look like you have an eating disorder — go home and get something to eat," she recalled, adding that she didn"t think she was "sick enough" to need help, either.

Some doctors say weight requirements should be eliminated from all eating disorders in the new diagnostic manual. Deb, an eating disorder specialist in Los Altos, CA, notes that people of any weight and body mass index may binge, purge or diet excessively.

"I have worked with plenty of restricting average-sized and fat patients who really should be diagnosed with anorexia nervosa," said Deb, a founder of a program, an approach that focuses on health rather than weight. "But there is confusion based on the current DSM whether they meet the criteria for the diagnosis if they are not at a low BMI. — even if their current weight is extremely low for them individually and they"re showing signs of starvation."

Perhaps the most difficult part of treating Ednos is that "normal" eating is such an elusive concept. Thinness tends to be the ideal, no matter what lengths people go to get there.

"What Ednos really demonstrates," said another specialist "is that we don"t have empirically derived diagnoses in psychiatry".

Psychiatric diagnosis

"Think about the diagnosis of depression. When does someone have a clinical syndrome versus a mood fluctuation? At what point should it be regarded as a condition that needs treatment? When you talk about food habits, it becomes extraordinarily complicated, because everybody has a relationship with food, and it"s usually a somewhat complicated one."

Observations

Ednos, is NOT a diagnosis, but another expression of the tremendous power DSM-ETC can exert when inventing new categories.

Under Ednos, a post-op gastric reduction patient, with more than 25% loss of body weight, would qualify for anorexia, a vegetarian would qualify as "orthorexia" for avoiding hamburgers, as it would do the same, people who keep kosher or those who insist in not eating fat and sugary foods because they are fattening.

In other words, everybody will qualify, while the drug companies will release products to match all the new categories.

The diagnosis in psychiatry

When I entered the field of psychiatry in order to establish a diagnosis we were guided by that, the most valuable of instrumental tools developed in psychiatry:

The Mental Status Examination (MSE)

In order to be fair and eclectic, before going any further I"ll offer to the reader an abridged summary of what Wikipedia English has to offer as definition:

"Theoretical foundations

"The MSE derives from an approach to psychiatry known as descriptive psychopathology or descriptive phenomenology which developed from the work of the philosopher and psychiatrist Karl Jaspers. From Jaspers' perspective it was assumed that the only way to comprehend a patient's experience is through his or her own description (through an approach of empathic and non-theoretical enquiry), as distinct from an interpretive or psychoanalytic approach which assumes the analyst might understand experiences or processes of which the patient is unaware, such as defense mechanisms or unconscious drives.

"In practice, the MSE is a blend of empathic descriptive phenomenology and empirical clinical observation. It has been argued that the term phenomenology has become corrupted in clinical psychiatry: current usage, as a set of supposedly objective descriptions of a psychiatric patient (a synonym for signs and symptoms), is incompatible with the original meaning which was concerned with comprehending a patient's subjective experience.

"Application

"The mental status examination is a core skill of psychiatrists, nurses, and other qualified mental health providers. It is a key part of the initial psychiatric assessment in an out-patient or psychiatric hospital setting. It is a systematic collection of data based on observation of the patient's behavior while the patient is in the clinician's view during the interview. The purpose is to obtain evidence of symptoms and signs of mental disorders, including danger to self and others, that are present at the time of the interview. Further, information on the patient's insight, judgment, and capacity for abstract reasoning is used to inform decisions about treatment strategy and the choice of an appropriate treatment setting. It is carried out in the manner of an informal enquiry, using a combination of open and closed questions, supplemented by structured tests to assess cognition. The MSE can also be considered part of the comprehensive physical examination performed by physicians and nurses although it may be performed in a cursory and abbreviated way in non-mental-health settings. Information is usually recorded as free-form text using the standard headings, but brief MSE checklists are available for use in emergency situations, for example by paramedics or emergency department staff. The information obtained in the MSE is used, together with the biographical and social information of the psychiatric history, to generate a diagnosis, a psychiatric formulation and a treatment plan".

Psychiatric diagnosis soon to be in exile

That is a definition as good as any one may need for any purpose

For my convenience, while serving in the Navy, I abbreviated the essentials of the format as follows:

• Orientation

• Memories

• Intellectual resources

• Judgment and

• Affect

That"s was it! (OMIJA).

It served me well — very well.

Now, that was before I realized what my supervisor Louis F. Cleary, was trying to tell me, when advised me of the following:

"The psychiatric diagnosis is an intuitive exercise that only those who are able to master it can appreciate.

"It"s usually done during the first few minutes of the interview with the new patient, the rest of the session is used merely to confirm your impressions

"But, the most important thing to bear in mind is that is an ongoing and dynamic process that one has to review constantly during therapy".

The latter summarizes the old idea that some doctors were naturally endowed with a clinician"s eye. (Eye of Horus?).

Psychiatric diagnosis in the offing

And I can attest to the accuracy of my beloved teacher"s observations.

Is nothing like my friend Edward attempted to do with Carolynn (the name of the anorexic patient whose diagnosis he entirely missed).

But, that"s not where the perils of the diagnosing by criteria end.

This "shopping list effect" can be used with devastating consequences in a court room by unscrupulous attorneys and psychiatrists that adjust their diagnostic formulations following the bed of Procrustes that DSM so nicely avails to them.

In a particular case, an attorney for the defense in a case of admitted wrongdoing by the client. The agitated attorney brandishing a copy of DSM, to which she pointed with her finger furiously, attempted to demolish the well established formulations concluded by the expert witness, by demanding an item by item justification for his impressions.

DSM is based on biased reasoning and nothing else.

But is it patterned after a recognizable model?

If check lists can be models, perhaps it is, but before we answer that question, let"s see the most likely to be the model that any system of classification should follow.

Let"s see what the science of taxonomy has to offer on this regard.

After a very thorough review of much of what, about this is written, I am left with the uncomfortable feeling — and feelings are not precisely the stuff of scientific inquiry — that what the architects of DSM-ETC really desired to achieve was to install their Procrustean bed at the side of the road of psychiatry as a discipline and for them to adjust the bed to fit their personal agendas.

Thus, by adopting something as subjective as their whims would have it and as subversive as the needs of the occasion would require, everything would result in what we already have; a system that is absolutely unsystematic and an unscientific "scientific" instrument to classify the morbidity of an entire field of endeavor, namely the field of psychiatry.

All about Big Pharma

The shortcomings of all DSMs have been proven through the years of their existence.

But, as the Politburos of the ancient communism would have it, it can be very effective in establishing political control.

In this case, the losers are American Psychiatry and the American public, for having no one whom to trust…

I rest my case.

Bibliography

Ample references furnished on request.

Autor:

Félix E. F. Larocca MD