Head of DSM-IV task force calls DSM-5 scientific review committee a rubber stamp

Details: Category: Cake Recipes; Published on Tuesday, 26 July 2011 17:23; Written by Lara Landis; Hits: 726

Allen Frances, a prominent psychiatrist and frequent contributor to the Psychaitric Times blog recently expressed disappointment over how the DMS 5 Scientific Review committee handled the process. He accused the task force of rubber stamping the proposal put forth by the workgroups without subjecting it to independent review. According to Frances, members of various DSM-5 committees sat on the scientific review committee. He called the scientific review committie little more than a “rubber stamp” for the DSM 5 task force.

Frances, who headed the DSM-IV task force, has been a vocal critic of the process used to create the DSM 5. His most recent criticism involved a diagnosis of temper disregulation, but if there is no independent review of the new DSM, as he suggests, it brings into question many other diagnoses that have made it into the manual and brings into question decisions about other diagnoses, including Gender Dysphoria and Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder.

Asexuals have long taken an interest in the inclusion in the DSM and take issue with a diagnosis that may label Asexual as mentally ill when there is nothing wrong with them. If the committee operated in secrecy, suggesting the proposals the scientific task force comes up with were only disclosed to the APA Board of Trustees. If the scientific review committee did not subject itself to what many people understand to be a code of scientific ethics, it may bring the validity of the entire manual into question. It certainly brings pause to both Asexual activists and Transgender activists whose concerns were heard and apparently ignored by members of the DSM-5 task force.

While it is doubtful that the HSDD diagnosis will be altered so that it does not include a life-long diagnosis, the process used by the DSM means that the publishers will need to push its dates back even farther if they want it to go through the rigorous scientific and academic publishing process.