[ddq]

Can you provide evidence-based numbers of how many people's lives have been saved or improved vs how many have been ruined or ended in part due to the guidelines DSM? Or what the outcomes would have been had psychiatry not continued to rely on it as the gold standard? Without a comparison, a vague, unsubstantiated claim such as that is worthless.

[dns_snek]

I'm not familiar with every diagnosis in the DSM-5, but I'm very familiar with ADHD. The DSM lays down the diagnostic criteria, brain scans of people diagnosed according to those criteria have confirmed structural and functional differences, and even more extensive studies have confirmed the overwhelming efficacy of the medication used to treat the disorder. Is that worthless?

Claiming that DSM-5 is "worthless" simply because it doesn't provide physical mechanisms that cause the disorders is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence, not the other way around.

> how many have been ruined or ended in part due to the guidelines DSM

You tell us, how many have been ruined? What "guidelines" are you referring to?

[moi2388]

Homosexuality was in the DSM. As was hysteria.

Because they looked at clusters of symptoms, rather than actual causes.

Precisely my point.

As for ADHD etc; you do realise they changed the treatments and clustering precisely because of insight in physical processes?!

[dns_snek]

Those things make it flawed, not worthless. Your "precise" point was that the DSM-5 is worthless, please don't move the goalposts now.

[moi2388]

Now you are moving the goalpost. I said that the DSM when not providing the underlying physical processes is worthless.

I stand by that. In fact, historically whenever they did this they caused a lot of harm.

[dns_snek]

> Now you are moving the goalpost

I would beg to disagree: "The DSM is a bunch of nonsense. As long as [...], it’s worthless."

> DSM when not providing the underlying physical processes is worthless.

And when does the DSM ever provide the "underlying physical process"? It certainly doesn't for ADHD or any other chapters I happen to have read, which would make them worthless according to your criteria despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

And while I haven't read all 1000 pages of the DSM because it's not exactly my idea of a good time, I don't think it provides that kind of information in any chapter because we simply don't understand these disorders to that extent, as your original comment correctly observed.