Title: Mental health: On the spectrum : Nature News & Comment
Headings: Mental health: On the spectrum
Mental health: On the spectrum
Manual evolution
“We need to give researchers permission to think outside these traditional silos.”
Rival approach
Change of tack
References
Author information
Commenting is currently unavailable.

Content: According to this view, the disorders are the product of shared risk factors that lead to abnormalities in intersecting drives such as motivation and reward anticipation, which can be measured (hence 'dimension') and used to place people on one of several spectra. But the attempt to introduce this approach foundered, as other psychiatrists and psychologists protested that it was premature. Research could yet come to the rescue. In 2010, the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Maryland, launched an initiative, called the Research Domain Criteria project, that aims to improve understanding of dimensional variables and the brain circuits involved in mental disorders. Clinical psychologist Bruce Cuthbert, who heads the project, says that it is an attempt to go “back to the drawing board” on mental illness. In place of categories, he says, “we do have to start thinking instead about how these disorders are dysregulation in normal processes”. But that will be too late for the DSM. Kupfer says that he now sees how hard it is to change clinical doctrine. “ The plane is in the air and we have had to make the changes while it is still flying.” Manual evolution
The Catholic Church changes its pope more often than the APA publishes a new DSM.