"...DSM-5 (come on everyone, let's drop the Roman numeral already. Cicero and Seneca ain't writing the dang thing),..."

LOL
I always asked myself why the Roman numeral and believe they use it to suggest credibility and hide the fact that they are always creating new diseases that doesn't exist, are symptoms of others, evergreening drugs...
Gee, what a science!
I will read the article now because I stopped at " the dang thing".

re:"The public needs to know that psychiatry is a field in its infancy"
No. Psychiatry is not in its infancy. Religion has been around a long time. People with freewill make choices, not a nonsentient trademarked ® chemical.
The psychiatrists are priests (priests of the holy molecule), the people are worshipers, the nonworshipers are heretics.
Why do the people worship? The biggest fear and love, the fear and love of insanity.
"Trust the force Luke" says a schizophrenic voice in Star Wars.

"This is a field of humility."

Huh? I almost choked on my Wheaties when I read that. She's an academic psychiatrist and she thinks her peers are humble ???

Sorry, Dr Vollmer, but don't you realize that your colleagues absolutely understand ALL the complexities and vagaries of human behavior, know PRECISELY why we differ from each other, and are CERTAIN which exogenous compounds can return us to "normal"?

Sounds like you fail to understand the potential impact of modern psychiatry on vastly improving the human condition through chemistry. When you're on the cusp of reforming and reshaping society in such a marvelous way, there's no need for humility.

Right.

Only Vollmer's still a doper. See this ode to psycho-pharm as benign pixie dust in a previous blog entry of hers:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/learning-play/200912/treating-personality

So in other words, some psychiatrists may have issue with the DSM diagnostic labels, but at the end of the day they're still writing scripts for chemical brain bombs.

It's a distinction without a difference no matter how Vollmer couches it.

Ironically, I think one of the motivators for being so expansive in the diagnostic categories, such that 50% of people can be said to "have" a psych disorder, is based on our messed-up health- care system. In order to get reimbursed for any behavioral health treatments, you need a dx.

Say what you will about nationalized health care, the dr will get paid in any case, so no need for DSM numbers. Over and over when I read about the DSM, it says one of its reasons for being is so people can get insurance payments. How it came to be normal for medicine to be hinged on money this way is a scandal. A book on diagnosis and treatment should be keyed to medical science only.

And they should stop calling the DSM the "bible." The actual Bible is not revised every decade. "OK, let's add a few new commandments, and merge Commandments 3 and 4." ETC.

Wow, Shirah Vollmer is saying things I've rarely heard from psychiatrists before. I might not agree with everything she says or does, but it at least sounds like she's thinking about her field and trying to apply moderation and common sense. If more psychiatrists thought that way, the world would be a much better place.

As a student working toward a counseling degree, I'd love to see the DSM go away. But it won't happen. The APA is determined to make psychology into a "medical model," where drugs are the first line treatment and counseling is an adjunct at best.

Most of the working therapists (not psychiatrists) I know pretty much only use the DSM for billing purposes - and knowing which diagnoses will get their clients the greatest number of sessions is crucial to surviving as a therapist.

Most of the working therapists (not psychiatrists) I know pretty much only use the DSM for billing purposes - and knowing which diagnoses will get their clients the greatest number of sessions is crucial to surviving as a therapist.

This is not therapy! Psychiatry has took over and what we used to call "neurosis" is now under many labels "bipolarity"; PTSD; mild depression; anxiety disorder...
When I was a teenager one of the teachers was known as a man who had been on the war and because of that he was neurotic.
We all understood what he had been through. PTSD is a charming combination of letters and explain nothing about the emotional side of the "disorder".
Disorder? What on earth is it?
Stress? Aren't we all stressed?
Traumatic: good word and there is NO MEDICATION FOR THAT!
Ask any Vietnam vet and they are the best to teach those who are arriving how to cope with the... PTSD.
But psychiatry prescribe: antidepressant (they are not depressed in the real clinical meaning of this word); antipsychotic ( do I have to explain?) and, of course a benzodiazepine (clonazepam that is more addictive and hard to withdraw)
What a party!

My one and only hope for psychiatry, and the field of medicine as a whole, is that it will someday achieve some level of humility. I was very confused by that sentence; i couldn't tell if Dr. Vollmer was simply speaking for herself, or if she misspoke and had meant to say, "This _should be_ a field of humility."

It is odd to me that insurance companies apparently think that people would go for unlimited therapy sessions if they (insurance) didn't keep a tight leash on those payments. Really everyone i know has better things to do with their time.

"and knowing which diagnoses will get their clients the greatest number of sessions is crucial to surviving as a therapist."

It's also insurance fraud to base diagnoses solely on maximizing profits from an insurance company and malpractice to assign a label you believe to be invalid to a patient just to get money.

And troubling that a counseling student doesn't see this practice as wrong.