Posted by alexandra_k on August 25, 2004, at 23:20:17
I am currently reading 'Madness Explained: Psychosis and Human Nature' which is an interesting (and controversial) account of, well, you guessed it, madness...
I haven't finished it yet, but so far am finding his account of the history of mental disorders very interesting indeed... He also has interesting things to say about diagnosis (perhaps bordering on 'conspiracy theory'???)
e.g.
'The first manual, at 500 pages, was more than three times longer than DSM-II. During a period when the American publishing industry was experiencing serious difficulties, it became an unlikely best-seller. Nearly half a million copies were bought, generating an estimated revenue for the APA of over $9.8 million (a sum that does not include earnings from the numerous pocket guides to DSM-III which were later published). In the USA, the manual was widely embraced both by psychiatrists and psychologists fearful that, without a DSM-III diagnosis for each of their patients, payment from health insurance companies would not be forthcoming. Many journals would not accept papers for publication unless investigators could reassure their readers that the patients had been diagnosed according to the DSM system, thus ensuring that the criteria bacame standard among researchers, not only in America but also elsewhere in the world...
Not suprisingly, the appointment of a DSM-IV task force within four months of the publication of DSM III-R led some psychiatrists to protest. British psychiatrist Robert Kendall suggested that the exercise was little more than a cynical attempt to repeat the huge profits the APA had made from selling earlier editions...
When it appeared in 1994, DSM-IV weighed in at 900 pages... By the end of 2000, over 960,000 copies had been sold, a remarkable volume of sales given that there were just 42,000 psychiatrists and about 300,000 other mental health care professionals in the USA...
At the time of writing, the American Psychiatric Association has just released a provisional timetable for the publication of the fifth edition... Although the structure of the manual is yet to be determined, some observers have already speculated about its contents. For example, the American psychologist Roger Blashfield, in a paper ridiculing the entire approach, used statistical techniques to analyse trends in DSMs I-IV. Based on his calculations, he predicted that DSM-V will have 1256 pages, will contain 1800 diagnostic criteria and eleven appendices, and will generate $80 million in revenue for the APA. As the only basic colour that has yet to bve used on the cover of a DSM is brown, Blashfield has predicted that this colour will be used for DSM-V'.
p.62-3.
Heh, heh, kinda makes me embarrased that I brought one :-)
poster:alexandra_k
thread:382414
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/books/20040616/msgs/382414.html