2013 and ‘DSMitis’: implications for the Journal of Eating Disorders and its authors

Editorial Some of us can recall the fervour and excitement surrounding the introduction of the third revision of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) [1] onto the international psychiatric stage in 1980. History will judge the fifth revision of the DSM (DSM-5) [2] and whilst the response thus far appears more muted there are a number of substantive changes already impacting on clinicians and academics. For example, lecturers revising their powerpoints find it a much simpler system to explain with no axes to distinguish it from general medical classifications or to be a proxy for a simplified formulation. In assessment, Engel [3] and colleagues’ ‘biopsychosocial’ approach to psychiatric formulation may thus resume importance in capturing the understanding of the patient’s problems beyond the diagnosis. Whether the WHO disability scale [4] will have the utility and familiarity as the Global Assessment of Function (GAF [5]) is also unknown, particularly given the highly variable use of the GAF. Beyond the clinician what do the changes mean for academics? Already instruments like the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview [6] need urgent official upgrades. Fortunately the gold standard assessment instrument in Eating Disorders research, the Eating Disorder Examination (EDE) [7] and its self-report sister instrument the EDE-Q [8] require little adaptation and indeed have benefited from the alignment of criteria for presence of bulimia behaviours across disorders. Thus researchers will no longer have to inquire about binge eating over the past 6-months (as it is now diagnosed over 3-months) and the final question on menstrual function is no more a diagnostic item for anorexia nervosa. Will Journal of Eating Disorders accept papers using DSM-IV [5] criteria? The short answer is in most instances