Introduction to the special section on DSM-5 and forensic psychiatry
This article first appeared in The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. Wills CD, Gold LH, Introduction to the special section on DSM-5 and forensic psychiatry. J Am Acad Psychiatry Law. 2014, 42:132-5.
The American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) 2013 publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5),1 marks the first substantial revision of the psychiatric diagnostic classification system since the publication of DSM-III in 1980.2 In recent decades, significant advances in behavioral science, neuropsychiatry, molecular genetics, neuroimaging, and other fields of research have added new and important information to the understanding of mental disorders. The DSM-5 Task Force comprised work groups of clinicians, researchers, statisticians, and others who aspired to improve the validity of mental disorder diagnoses by incorporating information from empirical studies published over the past two decades into the diagnostic schema.
In this Special Section of The Journal, changes in the DSM-5 of particular importance to forensic psychiatrists are examined and discussed. The authors will present and discuss information relevant to the development of DSM-5, including its use in forensic practice, changes in the classification of specific disorders and the assessment of functioning, the end of the categorical multiaxial diagnostic system, and how transitioning to a dimensional diagnostic model may affect diagnosis and the determination of impairment. Some of these changes have been the source of criticism and conflict within the field of psychiatry.