A little over 30 years into its life journey, modern scientific psychiatry seems to be heading into a dark wood. Last year the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) withdrew its support for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSA/i), which has often been called the "bible of psychiatry". Pharmaceutical companies are to some extent pulling back from psychiatric research and drug development. Activists, journalists, and academics from various perspectives are criticising psychiatric research, diagnoses, and treatments. Psychiatry, it seems, has gone astray from the road it set out on during the late 20th century and now seems to be veering into Dante's "arduous wilderness".
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