Synopsis

Psychiatric diagnosis is indispensable to treatment, prognosis, and research in psychiatry and is used in other areas of medicine, law, education, criminal justice, the regulation of drugs by the FDA, and other arenas as well. Yet the current DSM system is a work in progress that will be altered by emerging knowledge about the causes of mental disorders, diagnostic tools such as functional MRI, and developments in neuroscience—all new since DSM-IV was issued.

In Advancing DSM: Dilemmas in Psychiatric Diagnosis, leading clinicians and researchers present diagnostic dilemmas from clinical practice that are intriguing, controversial, unresolved, and remarkable in their theoretical and scientific complexity. Chapters present a specific case study of a disorder or an area of diagnosis that illuminates the need for a revised diagnostic system. Chapter by chapter, Advancing DSM raises important, clinically relevant questions about the nature of diagnosis under the current DSM system and recommends new approaches.

DSM has been a landmark achievement for the field. By allowing reliable diagnosis, it has brought order out of chaos and fostered groundbreaking advances in research and clinical care. Advancing DSM updates readers on exciting changes in psychiatry today that will impact the DSM of tomorrow.

Reviewer: Michael Joel Schrift, D.O., M.A.(University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine)
Description: This book focuses on important scientific and theoretical issues regarding the validity of DSM diagnoses. Written and edited by nationally recognized researchers in the field, the book is an important and timely contribution to psychiatry.
Purpose: The purpose, according to the editors, is to outline the fundamental questions and controversies about the current classification of psychiatric disorders and to stimulate further research into these issues.
Audience: The intended audience, although not specifically stated, are researchers and clinicians in psychiatry and psychology. Anyone involved in the use of the DSM should be aware of the issues raised in this book.
Features: Topics covered include causation in psychiatry, distinguishing disorder from non-disorder, diagnostic groupings, neurobiological markers, the concept of schizotaxia, subthreshold disorders, multiaxial assessment, diagnostic dilemmas in classifying personality disorders, as well as the controversial topic of relationship disorders, which has a whole chapter devoted to it. Each chapter ends with current and relevant references.
Assessment: This is an excellent book on the critical conceptual issues of psychiatric diagnosis. I highly recommend it.

Biography

Katharine A. Phillips, M.D., is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University School of Medicine and Director of the Body Dysmorphic Disorder Program at Butler Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island.

Michael B. First, M.D., is Research Psychiatrist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, New York.

Harold Alan Pincus, M.D., is Professor and Executive Vice Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry in the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and Senior Scientist and Director of RAND at the University of Pittsburgh Health Research Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.