Itâ€™s no secret that rates of psychiatric conditions like autism and attention-deficit disorder have spiraled upward in recent years -- increases that have sparked an intense debate about where to draw the line between whatâ€™s considered â€œnormalâ€� behavior and whatâ€™s not. The American Psychiatric Association is in charge of drawing these lines, and its latest effort to do so - the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-5 - is scheduled to be published in April.

The book isnâ€™t even out and already a backlash has begun: some experts who have seen the recently finalized text are charging that this new version of â€œthe bibleâ€� of psychiatric disorders goes too far in prescribing psychiatric treatment for ostensibly normal human behavior.

Writing earlier this month in Psychology Today, Allen Frances argues that the DSM-5 creates psychiatric conditions where none really exist. Frances chaired the committee that oversaw production of the bookâ€™s previous edition, the DSM-IV (released in 1994), and in his article he outlines what he takes to be the â€œten most potentially harmful changesâ€� in the DSM-5. These include the creation of categories that reinterpret behaviors like grief, excessive eating, and forgetfulness as psychiatric disorders. He worries, echoing a critique made by the British Psychological Society of a draft of the DSM-5 in 2011, that this expansion of psychiatric diagnoses may lead people away from the kinds of help they really need:

Normal grief will become Major Depressive Disorder, thus medicalizing and trivializing our expectable and necessary emotional reactions to the loss of a loved one and substituting pills and superficial medical rituals for the deep consolations of family, friends, religion, and the resiliency that comes with time and the acceptance of the limitations of life.

The growing purview of the DSM invites conspiracy theoriesâ€”that committee members, many of whom have industry ties, are in cahoots with pharmaceutical companies to sell more drugs. Frances rejects this idea and instead proposes a subtler explanation for why the DSMâ€”which is nearly 10 times as long today as it was when it was first published in 1952â€”expands with every revision.

â€œTheirs is an intellectual, not financial, conflict of interest,â€� he writes, â€œthat results from the natural tendency of highly specialized experts to over value their pet ideas, to want to expand their own areas of research interest.â€�

Or, put another way: Over-Eagerness-to-Apply-Your-Professional-Perspective Disorder.

