Year in Review: DSM-5’s controversial debut
Diagnostic manual updates disorder criteria
By Bruce Bower
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When the American Psychiatric Association released the fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in May, big changes had already begun in the controversial business of defining mental disorders.
Psychiatrists involved in DSM-5 had hoped to link mental ailments, from schizophrenia to depression, to specific biological markers. But scientists failed to find such markers. So the psychiatric manual set out roughly 300 disorders that were ratified, as in previous editions, by consensus in groups of clinicians and researchers (SN: 6/29/13, p. 5).