Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-5

The DSM-5 sets out the American Psychiatric Association's classification of mental disorders, giving diagnostic criteria, codes, and descriptive text for each condition. It organises disorders by chapter rather than by the five axes of earlier editions, and numbers the series in Arabic rather than Roman figures. Several categories are recast along dimensional and spectrum lines, autism spectrum disorder among them, so that severity carries diagnostic weight.

Published in 2013, it retired the multiaxial format DSM-IV had used since 1994. Axis IV, which recorded psychosocial and environmental stressors, disappeared as a separate heading, and the Global Assessment of Functioning went with it. Context that once had a fixed place in the record must now be written into the narrative or noted against a Z code.

The revision drew sustained dispute. Allen Frances, who chaired the DSM-IV task force, argued it widened diagnostic boundaries; Thomas Insel, then directing the US National Institute of Mental Health, moved the agency's research funding toward its Research Domain Criteria rather than DSM categories.