The American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.), known as the DSM-5 for short, is a controversial document that often makes its way into criminal cases. See CJLF's brief in the Supreme Court case of Moore v. Texas, No. 15-797, pages 18-21.
Now John Anderer reports at Study Finds:
[A] new study conducted at the University of Liverpool has raised eyebrows by concluding that psychiatric diagnoses are "scientifically meaningless," and worthless as tools to accurately identify and address mental distress at an individual level.
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"Perhaps it is time we stopped pretending that medical-sounding labels contribute anything to our understanding of the complex causes of human distress or of what kind of help we need when distressed." Professor [and co-author] John Read comments.Or whether a person is morally responsible for what he does while distressed?
The actual study is, as usual, behind a steep paywall. Here is the citation: Kate Allsopp, John Read, Rhiannon Corcoran, & Peter Kinderman, Heterogeneity in psychiatric diagnostic classification, Psychiatry Research, Volume 279, September 2019, Pages 15-22
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