The DSM revision process: needing to keep an eye on the empirical ball

From DSM-III onward, successive DSM editions have strived to ground the diagnostic definitions in empirical evidence. DSM-IV established a three-stage process of empirical review, consisting of comprehensive and systematic literature reviews, secondary analyses of datasets, and field trials to provide reliability and validity data for the most substantial or controversial proposals. DSM-IV Work Group members were required to review the empirical literature to document explicitly the evidence supporting the text and criteria published in DSM-IV. As noted by Kendler and Solomon (2016), in contrast to the emphasis on systematic reviews in medicine which is a manifestation of the evidence-based medicine movement, such systematic evidence-based reviews have not been consistently integrated into the development of DSM-5, raising questions about empirical rigor underlying the DSM-5 revision. It is likely that this regression in terms of anchoring the revision process in a comprehensive review of empirical data stemmed from the emphasis during the DSM-5 revision process on trying to move DSM-5 from its categorical descriptive approach towards a more etiological dimensional approach. Although such a shift ultimately did not occur, the effort spent on trying to achieve a paradigm shift likely came at the expense of the hard work of conducting systematic empirical reviews. For the DSM to continue to remain credible in the current era of evidence-based medicine, it is essential that the developers of future editions of the DSM avoid taking their eye off the empirical ball and insure that the manual remains grounded in solid empirical evidence.