Petrie-Flom Student Fellow Michael J. Young has co-authored a new article with Dominic Sisti (Department of Medical Ethics & Health Policy, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania) and Bill of Health contributor Art Caplan (Division of Medical Ethics, NYU Langone Medical Center) in BMC Psychiatry on the ethical implications of efforts to base mental health diagnoses in biological causes.
From the abstract:
Background
The creation of each edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of psychiatry has proven enormously controversial. The current effort to revise the ‘bible’ of disorder definitions for the field of mental health is no exception. The controversy around DSM-5 reached a crescendo with the announcement from National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) that the institute would focus efforts on the development of their own psychiatric nosology, the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) (NIMH, 2013).
Discussion
The RDoC seem to be structured around the concern that the only way to find objectivity in the classification of diseases or disorders in psychiatry is to begin with biology and work back to symptoms. Values infuse medical categories in various ways and drive practical considerations about where and how to divide up constellations of already agreed upon symptoms.
Summary
We briefly argue that all nosologies are infused with values and, while we should continue to sharpen the psychiatric nosology, normativity will permeate even the strictest biologically based taxonomy; this need not be a bad thing.
Read the full article online.