Why, without solid scientific justification, has the number of mental disorders risen from 106 in the 1960s, to around 370 today? Why has the definition of mental disorder expanded to include ever more domains of human experience? In the first part of this lecture, Dr James Davies will take us behind the scenes of how the psychiatrist’s bible, the DSM, was actually written – did science drive the construction of new mental disorder categories like ADHD and major depression or were less scientific and more unexpected processes at play? His exclusive interviews with the creators of the DSM reveal the answer.
