The Newest Edition of Psychiatry’s “Bible,” the DSM-5, Is CompleteThe APA has finished revising the DSM and will publish the manual’s fifth edition in May 2013.
Here's what to expect
By
Ferris Jabr http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... D_20130128(- -)
Hoarding is now an official disorderHoarding is the excessive accumulation of stuff—often stuff that most people would throw out or give away, such as junk mail, unworn clothes, old newspapers and broken tchotchkes. Some people hoard animals or obsessively collect a particular item, such as fabric. Many hoarders store their collections in their homes, but some use their cars or offices instead. Although the stuff piles up, commandeering all living spaces save for narrow "goat trails," hoarders refuse to get rid of anything. In some cases, hoarders simply do not recognize all the chaos and clutter as a problem. In past editions, the DSM regarded hoarding as a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Now, in a move well supported by a variety of research, the DSM-5 makes hoarding a disorder in its own right.
Studies published in the last 10 years have emphasized that many hoarders do not have any other symptoms of OCD and that hoarding may be more common than OCD in the general population. Investigations have also suggested that although OCD and hoarding can co-occur, they are genetically and neurologically distinct. Parents and siblings of hoarders show higher rates of hoarding than do first-degree relatives of people with OCD, for instance, and hoarding seems to be inherited as a recessive trait, whereas the compulsive checking and organizing that characterizes OCD is dominant. Further, although some antidepressants, such selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), and cognitive behavioral therapy often help OCD, their success is much more mixed in changing hoarding behaviors.
Neuroimaging studies support the new diagnosis as well. They have revealed that when hoarders make decisions about what to keep and what to throw out, their brain activity is markedly different from that of people with OCD and people without a mental disorder. In such situations, hoarders take far longer to make up their minds and show more activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, a brain region that is important for decision-making, as well as higher activity in the insula, an area of the brain that helps us interpret our emotions and physiological responses. Hoarders, it seems, form strong emotional attachments to objects that most people would not hesitate to chuck out.
Renaming addiction and introducing gambling disorder(- -)