The draft disorders and disorder criteria proposed by the DSM-5 Work Groups for new and existing mental disorders can be found on these pages. You will notice that the diagnostic chapters listed below are no longer organized according to DSM-IV. Instead, we have restructured the diagnostic chapters in DSM-5 to better reflect advances in our scientific understanding of psychiatric disorders, as well as to make diagnosis easier and more feasible for clinicians. You can read more about the rationale behind the revised chapter structure in a recent article from APA President Carol A. Bernstein, M.D., from Psychiatric News.
Use the links below to read about proposed changes to the disorders that interest you. Although the disorders listed below are listed according to their proposed placement in DSM-5, you may click here if you are interested in seeing which work groups are addressing which disorders. Please note that the proposed criteria listed here are not final. These are initial drafts of the recommendations that have been made to date by the DSM-5 Work Groups.
You will also notice for each disorder a section pertaining to the assessment of disorder severity. The severity criteria being proposed differs somewhat across disorders, largely because the work groups are in different stages in their deliberation processes. Therefore, you will notice some variability in the range of options presented across disorders, as well as differences in the severity scales being proposed. However, by DSM-5’s completion, we look forward to presenting a standardized method for assessing severity for all diagnoses, with an emphasis on simplicity and clinical utility.
Finally, in addition to pages on each of the DSM-IV diagnostic categories, you will notice a section on Structural, Cross-Cutting, and General Classification Issues for DSM-5. This section contains proposed revisions that are not specific to diagnostic criteria and include such items as how DSM-5 plans to address the multi-axial system of classification, a description of dimensional assessments in DSM-5, a revised definition of a mental disorder, a listing of disorders proposed by outside sources that are still under consideration, and more. Please be sure to review this section in addition to the diagnostic-specific sections.
At this time, we are accepting comment submissions on this Web site until June 15, 2011. The work group members will review all feedback and make decisions about further revisions based in part on the comments provided as well as on results from field trial testing, which is currently underway. Once the next edition of changes have been implemented, we will post the revised criteria on this site to allow commentary once again.
*Please note that all input we receive will be reviewed, though we can not guarantee that your suggestions will be incorporated into any revisions.