This Age of Meta-Analyses in matters of the psyche is poking holes in some broadly held paradigms, nowhere more apparent than those relating to the notion of the monolithic Major Depressive Disorder. The efficacy and safety of the SSRIs are being widely re-considered. The DSM-5 Field Trials made an assault on the bedrock reliability that […]
I decided that trying to summarize Why is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders so hard to revise? Path-dependence and "lock-in" in classification in the last post [a curious inertia…] was too much, but rereading it this morning, I changed my mind. Independent from how the DSMs came into being, this article has […]
Why is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders so hard to revise? Path-dependence and "lock-in" in classification. by Cooper R Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. 2015 51:1-10. The latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM-5, was published in May 2013. In the […]
I’ve mentioned this before, but it won’t seem to go away. When I opened the program guide for the 2015 APA Convention, this immediately caught my eye: If you don’t know or recall what this is about, I’d suggest reading yellow brick roads… where I first met the NNCI [on Friday the 13th in March […]
There’s something kind of unique about the last paradigm shift in American Psychiatry [see roots… and agendae…]. It didn’t happen just because of changes in the ways people thought or some scientific advances. It was orchestrated by the American Psychiatric Association and effected by a change in the Diagnostic System [which nail?…, a card laid…]. […]
It really is impossible to start this story at the beginning. And who knows where the middle is before the end is in sight? So all that is clear is the lead-in and general directions. The loose debate in the articles below picks up with an interview in Truthout of Robert Whitaker by one of […]
Well, this can’t be a book review of Lieberman’s and Ogasi’s Shrinks, the Untold Story of Psychiatry or Whitaker’s and Cosgrove’s Psychiatry under the Influence because I’ve read neither, but we all have a pretty good take on what they’re about. What struck me is that the titles could be interchanged, and they would still […]
I don’t actually believe that most of the patients who showed up in my office looking for help were afflicted with a biologically determined brain disease, but from the first case I ever saw of melancholic depression to the present, I never doubted that biology was the major player in that condition. One of the […]
Back in ancient history when CBT first came along, we used to joke that if you needed a publication for tenure, you could always do a study with four groups: Placebo, CBT, Antidepressant, CBT+Antidepressant. It seemed like that was the most repeated study in history and they always seemed to come out the same. CBT […]
Living in the UK in the1970s practicing in an a US Air Force Hospital near one of the UK’s primo Hospitals [Addenbrooks, in Cambridge] was interesting. Suffice it to say that our systems and expectations are very different. I never quite ‘got it‘ – except to say ‘very different‘ and ‘interesting.’ I think I understand […]