Confirmation: NIMH blog post on new research program was not a bombshell.

Last week, I chastised New Scientist for describing a blog post from the National Institute of Mental Health as "a bombshell."

Andy Coughlan and Sara Reardon wrote the following lede off of the post, written by the NIMH director, Thomas Insel:

The world's biggest mental health research institute is abandoning the new version of psychiatry's "bible" – the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, questioning its validity and stating that "patients with mental disorders deserve better." This bombshell comes just weeks before the publication of the fifth revision of the manual, called DSM-5.

Now Insel and Jeffrey A. Lieberman, M.D., President-elect of the American Psychiatric Association–which publishes the DSM-5–have issued a joint statement saying, in effect, this was no bombshell.

The statement backs the usefulness of the DSM in current psychiatric practice, while underscoring the difference between clinical practice and research:

Patients, families, and insurers can be confident that effective treatments are available and that the DSM is the key resource for delivering the best available care…Yet, what may be realistically feasible today for practitioners is no longer sufficient for researchers. Looking forward, laying the groundwork for a future diagnostic system that more directly reflects modern brain science will require openness to rethinking traditional categories.

Insel was talking about research, not practice. The NIMH is not "abandoning" the DSM-5, as Coughlan and Reardon wrote. 

The DSM-5 has vast influence over how mental illnesses are diagnosed and which treatments should qualify for insurance coverage.

That makes it controversial enough, even without false charges of abandonment. 

-Paul Raeburn