clipped from: www.nytimes.com   
Psychiatrists Revise the Book of Human Troubles

The book is at least three years away from publication, but it is already stirring bitter debates over a new set of possible psychiatric disorders.

Is compulsive shopping a mental problem? Do children who continually recoil from sights and sounds suffer from sensory problems — or just need extra attention? Should a fetish be considered a mental disorder, as many now are?

Dr. Darrel A. Regier is co-chairman of a panel compiling the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

A Growing List of Mental Ills

Panels of psychiatrists are hashing out just such questions, and their answers — to be published in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — will have consequences for insurance reimbursement, research and individuals’ psychological identity for years to come.

The process has become such a contentious social and scientific exercise that for the first time the book’s
publisher,
the American Psychiatric Association