Bipolar disorder diagnosis has been rising dramatically in children for the past decade. In response to this increase, writes Daniel Dickstein, M.D., of Bradley Hospital and Brown University, researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health and elsewhere are reviewing the diagnostic criteria. In coming years, Dickstein argues, recognizing and diagnosing bipolar disorder in children should...

We conducted a retrospective study of 473,964 U.S. Army soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan through December 2004 using deployment and admission records. We categorized mental disorder diagnoses using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) and identified attempted suicide/ self-inflicted injuries using ICD-9-CM diagnosis codes E950-E959. We esti...

Psychiatric diagnosis is one of the most important topics within the broad field of psychiatry. Clear, accurate definitions of the various disorders are essential for clinicians around the world to be confident that they are classifying patients in the same way, thereby enabling comparisons of treatment regimens and their outcomes. There are two major classification systems in use, one produced...

The history of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) reflects the larger history of American psychiatry. As the field anticipates DSM-5, it is useful to take stock of this history and consider not only how diagnosis impacts our understanding of mental illness but also how contemporary thought influences diagnosis. Before the DSM, the field was disjointed. The publicati...

The field of clinical psychology may benefit from adopting a deliberate self-injury syndrome as a distinct disorder for representation in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text rev.; American Psychiatric Association, 2000). The phenomenological and empirical data supporting a deliberate self-injury syndrome are reviewed, and arguments for and against the adopti...

This article reviews the history and evolution of the diagnosis of personality disorders according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) from its first edition in 1952 through its fourth edition in 1994. The article also traces the earliest origins of personality disorders (e.g., Hippocrates) through the modern foundational works of Pritchard, Schneider, and Horney....