Harmful changes in DSM-5

The DSM-5 will soon be the bible of psychological disorders, but it has critics. Psychiatrist Allen Frances was chairman of the DSM-IV Task Force and he writes:

This is the saddest moment in my 45 year career of studying, practicing, and teaching psychiatry. The Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association has given its final approval to a deeply flawed DSM 5 containing many changes that seem clearly unsafe and scientifically unsound. ...

So, here is my list of DSM 5's ten most potentially harmful changes. ...

1) Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder: DSM 5 will turn temper tantrums into a mental disorder
2) Normal grief will become Major Depressive Disorder
3) The everyday forgetting characteristic of old age will now be misdiagnosed as Minor Neurocognitive Disorder
4) DSM 5 will likely trigger a fad of Adult Attention Deficit Disorder leading to widespread misuse of stimulant drugs
5) Excessive eating 12 times in 3 months is no longer just a manifestation of gluttony and the easy availability of really great tasting food.
6) The changes in the DSM 5 definition of Autism will result in lowered rates - 10% according to estimates by the DSM 5 work group, perhaps 50% according to outside research groups.
8) DSM 5 has created a slippery slope by introducing the concept of Behavioral Addictions
9) DSM 5 obscures the already fuzzy boundary been Generalized Anxiety Disorder and the worries of everyday life.
10) DSM 5 has opened the gate even further to the already existing problem of misdiagnosis of PTSD in forensic settings. ...

Except for autism, all the DSM 5 changes loosen diagnosis and threaten to turn our current diagnostic inflation into diagnostic hyperinflation. ...

DSM 5 violates the most sacred (and most frequently ignored) tenet in medicine- First Do No Harm! That's why this is such a sad moment.

Most or all of these changes can be explain by serving the convenience of the profession. For example, the psychiatrists want to be able to prescribe anti-depressant drugs to those experiencing the normal grief of a death in the family.

Natural News goes further, and tries to explain how modern psychiatry really works:

The new, upcoming DSM-5 "psychiatry bible," expected to be released in a few months, has transformed itself from a medical reference manual to a testament to the insanity of the industry itself.

"Mental disorders" named in the DSM-5 include "General Anxiety Disorder" or GAD for short. GAD can be diagnosed in a person who feels a little anxious doing something like, say, talking to a psychiatrist. Thus, the mere act of a psychiatrist engaging in the possibility of making a diagnoses causes the "symptoms" of that diagnoses to magically appear.

This is called quack science and circular reasoning, yet it's indicative of the entire industry of psychiatry which has become such a laughing stock among scientific circles that even the science skeptics are starting to turn their backs in disgust. Psychiatry is no more "scientific" than astrology or palm reading, yet its practitioners call themselves "doctors" of psychiatry in order to try to make quackery sound credible.