Monday, September 19, 2011

No more psychiatric labels

I have joined the campaign to abolish psychiatric diagnostic systems like DSM called "No more psychiatric labels". There is an overemphasis on biomedical diagnosis in psychiatry (eg. see my article with this title). Psychiatry does need to recognise diagnosis for what it is (eg. see presentation from a talk of mine).

Even Allen Francis, Chair of the DSM-IV taskforce, is critical of the approval of new fad diagnoses in DSM-5 (eg. It's not too late to save 'normal' and a more recent Psychiatric Times article). I think we'd be better off without any psychiatric diagnostic system at all for a while rather than go along with DSM-5.