The Politics of Systems Change: Lessons Learned from the Launch of the DSM-5 Boycott

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Machiavelli had it right. “There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order to things.” Ever since we launched our DSM-5 Boycott three weeks ago, we’ve received support from organizations and individuals but have become entangled in more wrangling than I ever would have anticipated.

Lancet Psychiatry’s Controversial ADHD Study: Errors, Criticism, and Responses

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Amid calls for a retraction, Lancet Psychiatry publishes articles criticizing the original finding and a response from the authors.

Top Ten Things You May Not Know About the ICD-10

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In this piece for Psychology Today, Dr. Jonathan D. Raskin lists 10 facts about the current version of the International Classification of Diseases, which is...

Philosophers Challenge Psychiatry and its Search for Mechanisms of Disorder

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Attempting to locate the mechanisms of psychiatric disorder is a step in the wrong direction and fails to challenge potentially unjust social practices.

The Proliferation and Elimination of Mental Illness: Clinging to the Slopes of Everest

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A month ago, I published a critique of specific terminology of DSM-5.  Like countless others, I have serious concerns about the overpathologizing of normal behaviors that appears to be occurring over the past few decades.  The potential consequences of this trend have been widely articulated in many circles, and have raised a serious question, “What is normal?” But while this has been occurring in both psychiatric and lay arenas, another movement has been gaining significant support.  It is the idea that mental illness (or disease) is a fabrication, and as Sera Davidow quoted E. Fuller Torrey in her recent moving article, “Mental illness does not exist, and neither does mental health.”

“DSM-5: Caught between Mental Illness Stigma and Anti-Psychiatry Prejudice”

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Jeffrey Lieberman, incoming president of the APA, responds to criticism of the DSM and psychiatry, saying "it’s important to understand the difference between thoughtful,...

Challenging Resilience as a Buzzword: Toward a Contextualized Resilience Model

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Researcher Dr. Silke Schwarz highlights how Western psychology’s construction of individual resilience deflects emphasized individual pathology and deflects efforts at structural change.

Professionals Push Back on Psychiatric Diagnostic Manual, Propose Alternatives

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Criticisms of the DSM-5 spark alternative proposals and calls to reform diagnostic systems in the mental health field.

The Power Threat Meaning Framework One Year On

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The team that developed the Power Threat Meaning framework as a diagnostic alternative reflects on the response to the framework after one year.

Psychiatric Diagnosis Can Lead to Epistemic Injustice, Researchers Claim

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A discussion of the role of epistemic injustice in the experiences of patients diagnosed with psychiatric disorders.

Susie Orbach’s Guide to Books to Understand Yourself

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In this piece for The Guardian, Susie Orbach argues that we should not turn to the DSM to understand ourselves, but instead to the work of...

Does ‘Mental Illness’ Exist?

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In this interview for ABC Australia, leading psychology professor Peter Kinderman discusses why we need alternative ways of understanding and supporting people in distress that take...

German Psychologists Declare “the Drugs Don’t Work”

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Jürgen Margraf and Silvia Schneider, both well-known psychologists at the University of Bochum in Germany, claim that psychotropic drugs are no solution to mental...

Does DSM-5 Matter? Yes; but not for Psychiatrists

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What makes the DSM so pernicious is that it is a cultural document whose influence transcends not only psychiatric practice but also the Western civilization from which it originates. Each revision of the DSM rescripts and reimagines how we make sense of our experiences, reinterprets what thoughts, feelings and behaviors are socially sanctioned, and ultimately what it means to be human.

Diagnosis Dilemma

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Not long ago I had a conversation with a psychiatrist. He told me about a diagnostic dilemma he’d run up against at work; When a judge makes an unfunded treatment mandate as part of her judgment, she pressures the doctor to make a “payable” psychiatric diagnosis. If the doctor stretches the truth out of sympathy and provides an inaccurate but payable diagnosis so that his patient can have access to medical care and money to live on, he is committing fraud that can mean heavy fines and incarceration for himself.

From Psychiatry and Psychotherapy’s Grand Delusion Toward Constructions of a Post-Therapeutic State

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by Eugene Epstein, Manfred Wiesner, and Lothar Duda Over the past 50 years, the psychiatric and psychotherapeutic discourses of the western first world have infiltrated...

Unanswered Questions in New Mental Health Screening Program for Children

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An article presents new screening tools for pediatric depression and anxiety—but fails to answer its own questions about efficacy.

Harm Reduction & the Elephant in the Room: End DSM Dependency

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If you’ve been paying attention the last two years, you’ve seen the new DSM-5, as well as its predecessors, taking a beating from a variety of critics pre- and post-publication. Most have begun by noting the lack of construct validity of DSM’s diagnoses, dating from the landmark DSM-IIIR in 1987. Given the absence of scientific evidence to support their existence, these diagnoses were less likely to represent the neurobiological phenomena claimed by the DSMs’ several authors than to be products of their collective imaginations.

Does It Matter if We Believe in Mental Illness?

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It's clear that different people relate to the idea of "mental illness" and labeling differently. Many people find the experience of being diagnosed with...

Children Diagnosed with ADHD Younger are More Likely to get Multiple Medications

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New research demonstrates that children diagnosed with ADHD at younger ages are more likely than those diagnosed later to receive multiple medications within five years of their diagnosis.

Difference is Not Disease: Scientific Integrity, Human Diversity, and the Potentially Bleak Future of...

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There has been a lot of talk lately about neuroscience and the future of the medical model of "mental illness." It was made clear, in NIMH director Thomas Insel’s statement, that the DSM is a system of identification and classification of what are deemed disorders within our human experience. This isn’t exactly news to the vast majority of people who have spent even a little bit of time thinking about whether or not psychiatric diagnosis makes sense.

DxSummit Officially Launches

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As co-chair of the Diagnostic Summit Committee of the Society for Humanistic Psychology, I am pleased to announce that today we officially launch the Global Summit on Diagnostic Alternatives (DxSummit.org), an online platform for rethinking mental health. Our goal is to provide a place for a collegial and rigorous discussion of alternative ways to conceptualize and practice diagnosis. Today's launch is marked by the appearance of our first eight posts. These posts come from a variety of prominent people in the field, each offering a unique perspective on the current state of diagnosis and where we might take things as we move forward.

Time to Abolish Psychiatric Diagnosis?

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‘Diagnosing’ someone with a devastating label such as ‘schizophrenia’ or ‘personality disorder’ is one of the most damaging things one human being can do to another. Re-defining someone’s reality for them is the most insidious and the most devastating form of power we can use. It may be done with the best of intentions, but it is wrong - scientifically, professionally, and ethically. The DSM debate presents us with a unique opportunity to put some of this right, by working with service users towards a more helpful understanding of how and why they come to experience extreme forms of emotional distress.

DSM Panels Rife With Conflicts of Interest

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Safeguards ostensibly put in place to ensure "a transparent process of development for the DSM," and an "unbiased, evidence-based DSM, free from any conflicts...

Beyond Critique: Psychologists Discuss Diagnostic Alternatives

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The Journal of Humanistic Psychology compiles diverse research offering diagnostic alternatives toward a paradigm shift in mental health care.