Evidence map›Paper›PMID 25675983›Full record

ArticleEpidemiology and psychiatric sciences2015

DSM-5, psychiatric epidemiology and the false positives problem.

J C Wakefield

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Epidemiology and psychiatric sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
20citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

20 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.

  1. Pooled it
  2. Article
  3. Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Review
  7. Article
  8. Klerman's "credo" reconsidered: neo-Kraepelinianism, Spitzer's views, and what we can learn from the past.World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · 2022
    Article
  9. Article
  10. Article
  11. Review
  12. Article
  13. Article
  14. Observational
  15. Article
  16. Article
  17. Article
  18. Article
  19. Evaluating the Validity of Caffeine Use Disorder.Current psychiatry reports · 2015
    Review
  20. DSM-5 two years later: facts, myths and some key open issues.Epidemiology and psychiatric sciences · 2015
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

1 author.

J C WakefieldSchool of Social Work and Department of Psychiatry,New York University,New York,New York,USA.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The revision effort leading to the publication of the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) was flawed in process, goals and outcome. The revision process suffered from lack of an adequate public record of the rationale for changes, thus shortchanging future scholarship. The goals, such as dimensionalising diagnosis, incorporating biomarkers and separating impairment from diagnosis, were ill-considered and mostly abandoned. However, DSM-5's greatest problem, and the target of the most vigorous and sustained criticism, was its failure to take seriously the false positives problem. By expanding diagnosis beyond plausible boundaries in ways inconsistent with DSM-5's own definition of disorder, DSM-5 threatened the validity of psychiatric research, including especially psychiatric epidemiology. I present four examples: increasing the symptom options while decreasing the diagnostic threshold for substance use disorder, elimination of the bereavement exclusion from major depression, allowing verbal arguments as evidence of intermittent explosive disorder and expanding attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder to adults before addressing its manifest false positives problems.

Indexed as

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorderbereavement exclusiondepressiondiagnosis and classificationDSM 5harmful dysfunctionintermittent explosive disordermajor depressionmental disorderpsychiatric diagnosissubstance use disorder

Identifiers

PMID25675983
PMCPMC6998664

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.