The draft of the DSM-5, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, was released this week. This guide to the diagnosis of mental and behavioral health problems will shape the delivery of psychological, psychiatric, and social care for years to come.

You can access the entire draft here at the American Psychiatric Association DSM-5 Development Website. There the APA writes about the comment policy:

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.

It is interesting to note that the APA included a press release announcing that the DSM-5 Development Process Includes Emphasis on Gender and Cultural Sensitivity.

Actual proposed changes are set up in an interesting way. The opening tab is the proposed revision, but there is also are rationale, severity, and DSM-IV tabs. So it does provide more information than one might think.

So, as one major example, Major Depressive Disorder, Recurrent, has an extensive draft proposal for the DSM-5. Here the rationale isn’t that great, since it largely focuses on single episodes of depression. On the severity side, it’s clear what the APA group is thinking about in terms of differential ratings. And it’s easy to compare the DSM-5 with the DSM-IV criteria.

Vaughan Bell at Mind Hacks includes some extensive commentary, and a wealth of links, on the DSM-5 Draft in the piece The Draft of the New ‘Psychiatric Bible’ Is Published. He opens by saying:

It’s a masterpiece of compromise – intended to be largely backwardly compatible, so most psychiatrists could just get on diagnosing the few major mental illnesses that all clinicians recognise in the same way they always did, with some extra features if you’re an advanced user.

One of the most striking extra features is the addition of dimensions. These are essentially mini questionnaire-like ratings that allow the extent of a condition to be numerically rated, rather than just relying on a ‘you have it or you do not’ categorical diagnosis.

John Grohol, writing over at Psych Central, also provides an initial overview of the main changes in the DSM-V and then provides a review that features the good, the bad and the ugly.

If you’re looking for just the critical, the Psychiatric Times has a piece Opening Pandora’s Box: The 19 Worst Suggestions For DSM-5. Dr. Allen Frances, who chaired the DSM-IV Task Force, identifies two areas that are quite worrisome (and predictable) for a critical medical anthropologist:

(1) Dramatically higher rates of mental disorder, including “millions of newly misidentified false positive ‘patients’ [and] massive overtreatment with medications that are unnecessary, expensive, and often quite harmful”

(2) Unforeseen consequences, where DSM5 options often have an “insensitivity to possible misuse in forensic settings. Work Group members cannot be expected to anticipate the many ways lawyers will try to twist their good intentions.”

You can explore the legal aspects more over at In the News.

For specific diagnoses, Dr. Petra has particularly good coverage on the proposed changes in sexual disorders. Liz Spikol looks at the diagnosis of childhood bipolar disorder with a critical eye.

For more reading, Furious Seasons has some good initial thoughts on the DSM-5. Additional coverage can be found at the NY Times and New Scientist.