3 ms·

I'm guessing that the pressure to put it in the DSM had something to do with being able to bill health insurers for drugs which help with the withdrawal symptom

• gruseom 13y ago
  Hmm, that at least sounds plausible. Usually when institutions appear to behave stupidly, the reasons are not so much stupid as non-obvious.
• stephengillie 13y ago
  You're probably very right. Unlike what GP posted, the DSM isn't the bible of psychology. In Basic Psychology in college, I learned that the DSM only exists to help insurance companies classify and bill the practices of psychologists.
  • dragonwriter 13y ago
    Which is pretty much backwards, it's written by the American Psychiatric Association, not the insurance industry; certainly it is relevant to insurance, but not it's not written to help insurance companies do anything; it's written to document the accepted clinical practice of the psychiatric community in order to (among other things) help the psychiatric community secure full reimbursement for clinically-appropriate care from insurance companies.
    • stephengillie 13y ago
      So you're saying it's a guide for psychiatrists to push bills to insurers, not pull bills from them?