DSM 5 workgroups request feedback on proposals

The American Psychiatric Association has published:
Proposed Draft Revisions to DSM Disorders and Criteria for DSM5
that is for the up-coming (2013) fifth edition of the Diagnostic Manual for Mental Disorders.

Details are available at http://www.dsm5.org/

They request feedback by a hard deadline of 20 April 2010, including from involved professionals and individuals with anecdotal evidence, such as through personal experience. The deadline is not presently pressing but going on past experience the servers are likely to be overloaded on the last day or two and the deadline will not be extended. I encourage an early, but carefully worded, response.

You can enter feedback by creating an online login at http://www.dsm5.org/
in the usual way.

Sample feedback is a response on this thread.

Sample feedback from a loved-one (with permission)

Comments to dsm5.org on the Proposed Revision to 302.85 Gender Identity Disorder in Adolescents or Adults

Gender Identity Disorder and related diagnoses are controversial. I thank the work-group for making an effort to address long-standing criticisms.

Based on my own experience, which I suggest you take to be anecdotal evidence, I find that
(1) the condition commonly identified as Gender Identity Disorder is, in part, a normal psychological reaction to being stigmatized and abused for being transsexual and, in part, a normal psychological reaction to being raised in a gender other than a more health-promoting gender in which one might have been raised in another culture (eg phet thi sam gender in Thailand).
And (2) It is also a normal psychological reaction to having a sexed body that is sexed in a wrong way.

THEREFORE, I ask the relevant committee to ADD LANGUAGE to the 302.85 diagnosis as follows:-

Anecdotal evidence demonstrates that transsexualism is not a mental disorder nor a mental illness, however to psychiatrists it is best described as "transsexualism is a condition that may be the focus of clinical attention but in which the individual has no mental disorder".

Only good thing I see about the revisions to the Personality Disorders is no one will ever be diagnosed with one again-- too much work.

"Paraphilic Coercive Disorder???" Correct me if I'm misreading this, but isn't this just one more way to let even *more* rapists off the hook??? "But judge, my client suffers from 'Paraphilic Coercive Disorder'..."

>>> "Paraphilic Coercive Disorder???" Correct me if I'm misreading this, but isn't this just one more way to let even *more* rapists off the hook??? "But judge, my client suffers from 'Paraphilic Coercive Disorder'..."

Actually, no.

It is a way to keep sane and dangerous common criminals incarcerated after they have served out their prison term.

The principle being that doing criminal things is, and of itself, a form of insanity if the things are sufficiently wicked.

I am really hoping that as a result of input to this site the APA will rehaul their naming of the entire 'paraphilias' category and anything else using the 'philia' suffix. The way it is used there to denote a sexual fixation just seems inappropriate and far too divergent from its original Greek meanings as we see C.S. Lewis properly present it to mean loving friendship. This conflict creates a great deal of difficulty for people who interpret it by its old meaning, who translate it as simply love, and who are ignorant of the extensive criteria that the org applies to paraphilias.

It seems like a useful category to me (and I really like how they may distuinguish between paraphilia versus paraphilia-related disorder), it's just an issue of semantics here. Something more appropriate (-eros for example) would create less confusion and provoke discussion on the distinction of topics.