Storyboard: Episode 40 – The Book Of Woe

Stick a fork in it: in the long term, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is done for. That’s according to Gary Greenberg, a practicing psychotherapist and author of a feature in the January issue about the controversy surrounding the book’s future fifth edition. For decades, the DSM has been the definitive almanac of psychiatric disease. But the effort to update the book has highlighted the challenge of categorizing slippery, subjective mental states with the same certainty as say, high blood pressure. Today on the podcast, Greenberg and senior editor Bill Wasik join regular host Adam Rogers for a mind-bending conversation about the drama behind the DSM-V and the quest to name our pain.