Just had to share this with you. Was copied on an e-mail from Allen Frances yesterday, wherein he informed colleagues that two blogs had been posted yesterday whose principal themes were boycotting the new DSM.
One was mine, posted on this site yesterday. The other was also posted yesterday by Dr. Howard Brody on his website, http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com, entitled “Grief: You’d Better Suck It Up After Day 13.”
Brody advised the APA that he and other primary care physicians were pretty pissed off at the DSM5 Task Force for reducing the “grief exclusion” in Major Depression to a footnote, as if an afterthought. Brody explained that he and his colleagues are the ones who field most complaints by patients about feelings of depression; that, since the DSM III, he and other primary care physicians have made use of the DSM to guide them in making – or not making – that diagnosis and deciding on a course of treatment. Now rumor has it that his own professional organization, the American Academy of Family Physicians, along with other primary care physician organizations, “might vote formally to dissociate their members from [the] DSM … an unprecedented move … precisely due to the APA treating the DSM as its own private property and cash cow …”
Call the same-day postings serendipitous; but I think that Dr. Brody and I came up with our similar ideas as part of that flood of public opinion that is beginning to flow strongly against the APA and DSM5. Marxists might term it historical determinism; but as I tell my wife, when I come up with an idea, so do thousands of other folks. Nonetheless, like Brody, I do think we are arrived at an “unprecedented” moment.
So I call on those of you who agree with Brody and me, and you run a large gamut – from those who want the DSM revised and rid of certain objectionable diagnoses, to those, like me, who see the DSM, in its entirety, as harmful and want it discarded – to get the word out. Copy/e-mail/twitter, post on facebook mine and/or Brody’s blogs to/for all your colleagues, friends, family members and acquaintances; ask them, as I ask you now, to go the DSM5 website – www.dsm5.org — log in, click on the “overall comments” link, enter your comments and concerns and threaten to boycott – not buy – the new DSM unless your comments are heeded and necessary changes are made. I’ll simply tell the Task Force that I have no intention of purchasing the DSM5 and am urging friends and colleagues to boycott it as well.
Remember, you have until June 15; but, enough procrastination, do it now. And remember, as always, don’t mourn, organize
Source: https://www.madinamerica.com/2012/05/dsm5-boycott-growing-some-legs/
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