Posted by Larry Hoover on March 1, 2007, at 8:46:09
In reply to DSM, posted by Declan on March 1, 2007, at 1:03:45
> My doctor cheered me up today by volunteering the opinion that the DSM was the worst thing that had happened to psychiatry in 40 years.
I'm going to try and add a nuance to it. It was developed as a billing guide. A fee schedule, sort of. The purposes to which it was later put were not conceptualized, in the beginning.
Another thing. The contents are voted on. Simple majority of the attendees at the annual conference, or something like.
I also recall that many of the diagnoses show external validities of less than 0.4, i.e. clinically useless. If you can't agree on what a thing is, then the thing isn't.
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:737261
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070224/msgs/737284.html