Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-5-TR
The current American manual. It adds prolonged grief disorder, which puts a time limit on mourning for the first time.
Pathologising grief is an insult to the dignity of loving relationships; it proclaims grievers as mentally ill.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-5-TR, sets out the categories, criteria, and diagnostic codes the American Psychiatric Association uses to classify mental disorders. The 2022 text revision revises the descriptive text across most diagnoses, adds symptom codes for recording suicidal behaviour and nonsuicidal self-injury, and updates terminology, including language on ethnicity, sex, and gender. It aligns coding with the ICD-10-CM system used for billing and records.
The revision also introduces prolonged grief disorder as a formal diagnosis, with a duration threshold of roughly twelve months in adults before persistent, impairing grief may be coded. That addition has drawn sustained argument. Clinicians and researchers have divided over whether a time-bound criterion identifies a treatable condition or reclassifies ordinary mourning as illness. For the case record, the manual determines which codes are available and how a client's grief, risk, and history are documented.
Details
- 2022
- American Psychiatric Association
- American Psychiatric Association, Fifth edition, text revision
- 9780890425756