This month the American Psychiatric Association will publish the latest edition of its standard guidebook for clinicians, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5 (DSM-5). In somewhat the same way that a field guide to birds helps people distinguish different species with illustrations and descriptions of physical features—a beak’s hooked tip, a blush [...]

Bacteria hiding in the lungs might not be able to hide much longer. Although traditional tests can take days or weeks to culture to determine the presence of certain harmful bacteria—such as those that cause tuberculosis—a much more rapid technique for detecting lung infections might be on the horizon. Researchers have developed a test that [...]

Smart phone apps can help you check your vision, keep tabs on your blood-glucose levels and track your blood pressure. Earlier this year the U.S. Food and Drug Administration even approved an app that allows doctors to view scans on an iPhone or iPad to help them make diagnoses on the go. But fancy apps [...]

One of the toughest parts of raising children is helping them leap the emotional and intellectual hurdles of life. As parents, we try to ease their pain when friends snub them. We console them when their fears keep them awake at night. We scold them when they behave badly, and counsel them after they forget [...]

Part 5 of a 5-part series By Allen Frances* When the third edition of psychiatry’s manual of mental illness, the DSM-III, was published 30 years ago, there was great optimism it would soon be the willing victim of its own success, achieving a kind of planned obsolescence. Surely, the combining of a reasonably reliable system [...]

Part 4 of a series Depression and anxiety are like a pair of warring siblings. Both are disruptive and trying. They don’t want each other’s company, but are stuck together by virtue of the same parentage. Depression, after all, is often a product of rumination, the grating mental do-overs of ugly past events, usually with [...]

By Ferris Jabr* Part 2 of a series In the offices of psychiatrists and psychologists across the country you can find a rather hefty tome called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM). The current edition of the DSM, the DSM-IV, is something like a field guide to mental disorders: the book pairs [...]