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Title: Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5) Author: American Psychiatric Association Editors of Croatian Edition: Vlado Jukic, Goran Arbanas ISBN: 978-953-191-787-2 Publisher: Naklada Slap, Jastrebarsko, Croatia Number of pages: 936
Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders is a national classification, but since its third edition it became a worldwide used manual. [1] It has been published by the American Psychiatric Association and two years ago the fifth edition was released. [2] Croatian was among the first languages this book was translated to. [3] DSM-5 was translated by psychiatrists and psychologists, mainly from the University psychiatric hospital Vrapce and published by the Naklada Slap publisher.
DSM has always been more publicly debated than the other main classification - the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). [4] The same happened with this fifth edition. Even before it was released, numerous individuals, organizations, groups and associations were publicly speaking about the classification, new diagnostic entities and changing criteria. [5]
Although there is a tendency of authors of both DSM and ICD to synchronize these two classifications and to make them more harmonized with each new edition, there are several differences among them. While ICD covers all the diseases, disorders and reasons for making a contact with the health system, DSM covers "only" mental disorders. Other disorders (medical conditions, as they are named in DSM-5) are not included, except in situations when they lead to a development of a mental disorder. The other main difference is that DSM is more operational zed, and gives criteria for each of the disorders, listing how many criteria have to be met to make a diagnosis of a particular disorder, and what excluding criteria are.
Due to the fact that it is used all around the globe and since it has become the most used psychiatric manual, it is sometimes said that DSM is a "psychiatric Bible". [6]
Some critics of DSM say that it stigmatizes people and that in each edition it includes more diagnostic entities. It is true that in each edition of DSM there are more disorders listed, but this is due to the fact that medicine is a developing area and new insights are made every year, so some disorders are separated into different subtypes or...