The decision to back away from a proposed diagnosis of “attenuated psychosis syndrome" – for people at risk of developing psychosis, and from “mixed anxiety depressive disorder” – for people with a mixed state of both illnesses, was a welcome respite from the relentless push to expand the boundaries of pathology, experts said.
The American Psychiatric Association panel in charge of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) also modified the definition of depression to ensure that people experiencing normal grief over the death of a family member or a job loss would not be included.
Professor Gordon Parker, Scentia Professor in the School of Psychiatry at the University of New South Wales, said there had been “great concern in the community over the past 10 years in particular about what you could call ‘psychiatric imperialism’ – where the boundaries of categorising psychiatric disorders has moved from the clearly pathological down into the more normal. There’s that background concern that does need to be respected.”
http://theconversation.edu.au/backdown-on-new-psychiatric-diagnoses-a-welcome-respite-7092
