DSM5 Frances APA Letter Intro

Please see the letter I sent to the APA Trustees on April 8, 2010. It contains an urgent plea that the Trustees move immediately to correct the increasingly wayward course of  DSM5. The DSM5 Task Force is about to begin a field trial that is a complete mistake for these reasons:

1. It is unnecessarily expensive (a self-financed $2.5 million or more).
2. It is unnecessarily complicated, and will cause additional delays.
3. It fails to address the most important questions that do need answers.
4. It is so poorly designed that the results are very likely to discredit psychiatric diagnosis.

I write directly to you now because this may be a last chance tipping point to save DSM5-and because the APA leadership has so far proven itself consistently unable to provide adequate supervision. You need to be informed of the many crippling DSM5 problems before it will be too late for you to influence your leaders to take the decisive actions needed to solve them.

Allen Frances, MD

Click here to read Dr Frances' article and attachments.