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Psychiatry’s diagnostic bible is finally getting a biological upgrade
Ars Technica ·
Biology is coming to psychiatry’s diagnostic manual, even as reliable biomarkers remain rare.
The “bible” of clinical psychiatry—the DSM, short for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—is one of the most popular psychiatry reference books around the world. Clinicians use it to diagnose patients and scientists use it to guide research.
Despite its wide impact, the DSM has never integrated biology in its diagnoses of mental illness. This omission was largely because the underlying biology of mental illness was too preliminary to be included in such a widely used clinical manual.
The most recent version of the DSM—the DSM-5, released in 2013—has attracted significant criticism from clinicians and researchers, including on how its lack of objective biological measures risks medicalizing human suffering and reducing the validity of psychiatric diagnoses.
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