According to Horwitz and Wakefield, the definition of depression in the DSM is an embarrassing overreaction to some prior embarrassments in the psychiatric profession. A widely-touted 1972 study, for example, exposed a scandalous degree of disagreement between British and American shrinks in the diagnosis of depression in the same patients. The third edition of the DSM was a comprehensive revamp, headed by the prominent psychiatrist Robert L. Spitzer, aimed at improving the reliability of diagnosis across clinicians by laying out clear, symptom-based diagnostic rules that take no sides in psyc[…]
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