New Mental Health Disorders Being Classified?

It seems that new disorders are popping up everywhere lately. Shows like My Strange Addiction and Hoarders highlight individuals dealing with a variety of issues ranging from hoarding and a romantic obsession with a car to dangerous behaviors like sleeping with a running blow dryer. These behaviors are odd, to be sure, and they’re definitely hard for those who don’t suffer from them to understand, but are they legitimate mental health disorders?

The DSM-5, the fifth and most current version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, is a tool filled with detailed information on a wide variety of conditions, many of them familiar like bipolar disorder, alcoholism and PTSD. As experts work to prepare the next edition, due out in May 2013, they also do an extensive review of possible new conditions to include, according to a recent report from MyHealthNewsDaily.

To make the cut, the condition needs to have a unique set of symptoms and a verifiable medical cause. Some of the disorders being considered for inclusion in the next DSM include hypersexual disorder (different from sex addiction), premenstrual dysphoric disorder, binge eating disorder (distinct from bulimia because it doesn't include purging), learning disorder (a general category currently lacking in the DSM), cannabis withdrawal (separate from other disorders relating to the use or abuse of marijuana currently included in the DSM) and hoarding (which has ties to obsessive-compulsive disorders already in the DSM but scans show different brain patterns in hoarders).

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