A very sad story

摘要

When it is published this month, the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Associations Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, DSM-5, will mark well over a century of formal guides to psychiatric diagnosis. The first two psychiatric taxonomies were produced by Emil Kraepe-lin in 1893 and Thomas Salmon in 1918. Kraepelin's included not only schizophrenia and what we now know as bipolar disorder, but also "masturbatory insanity" and (hopefully unrelated) "wedding night psychosis", both of which soon fell out of favour. Salmon's contained a mere 20 diagnoses. The DSM-5, intended to be the primary US guide to mental-health diagnoses, is expected to include some 300. These will reportedly include new entries aimed at hoarding and binge eating, and a relaxed depression diagnosis that allows therapists to classify someone grieving a loved ones death for more than two weeks as depressed rather than, well, grieving.