History, present and future of DSMs

Reading three aricles one by one in a chronological order(Persons(1986), Allen(1998), Widiger & Clark(2000) was quite intiriquing in a way that I felt like walking through history of DSMs along with issues and concerns for and against them. I was able to grasp the footsteps of argument for including psychological processes based on research findings.From a psychological standpoints Persons(1986) argued for utilizing the advantages of the symptom approach in research, which was quite new ideas bacK then when DSM-III was used. Then Allen(1998) well illustrated current DSM-IV in a informative way with a rather neutral standpoints, from organization and contents of the DSM-IV to Challenges to validity and future directions. For Future directions, he just introduced advantages and disadvantages of three approches-Current Categorical, Prototype, and Dimensional ones. He does not voice out which one is best for more effective advancement for DSM-V. However, Widiger and Clark(2000) anticipated the future direction of DSM with integration model of “diemension” and “Categories”. (“The fundermental struture of future DSMs may consist of an ordered matrix of symptom-cluster dimensions, a diagnostic table of the elements that are used in combinations to describe the rich variety of human psychopathology, P954.) He cited a wide variety of research findings which lead him to this conclusion. For instance, the role of newroticisim in internalizing disorders and the role of personality dimension, particulary disinhibition in externalizing disorders. They are empirical evidences that dimension or latent factors for co-occurrence of certain types of disorders do exist, which provides a ground for calling for the inclusion of this aspect over the process of revision in DSMs.

P.S I’m kind of overwhelmed to see a huge and innovative progress in research methods in efforts for psychologists to be emprically strong with their studies. Extensive longitudinal studies, sophistcated statistical methods like SEM based on solid theoretical grounds, very structured designs to address specific research questions....