"The findings suggest the presence of both bias and error
and suggest even 'well-credentialed' psychiatrists and psychologists can reach an incorrect diagnosis."

[Unlike this article, we are praying there is no DSM 6 -- and the National Institute of Mental Health Health saves the Mental Health Profession & the rest of us -- especially those in Criminal Justice.]
There's a real hesitancy on the part of Defense Attorneys or Disability Advocates to raise systemic issues in Mental Health & Forensic Competence.

In fact, many people consider these concerns fringe concerns of the "Anti-Psychiatry Movement."

In fact as much as we have praised D.J. Jaffe, the Mental Illness Policy Organization & the Treatment Advocacy Center for exposing the lack of treatment available to people in the US with the most intensive mental health needs-- what we call the Conservative Mental Health Movement can be pretty uncritical of the current mental health profession and available treatments.

That's NOT true for the the US National Institute of Mental Health-- which has been extremely critical of the DSM 5 and current competence within the mental health profession -- certainly for a government-funded research institution.

Of course, criticism in and of itself has pretty severe limits and it can certainly be DESTRUCTIVE without accomplishing anything.

We're going through a pretty ROCKY reform process of the Mental Health Profession -- and if it feels like we've been here before -- it's because we have -- many times throughout recent history.

Will this REFORM PROCESS be the REFORM TO END ALL REFORMS -- probably not -- but it is likely to be HISTORIC because at the end of the day this current reform process which is being driven by a SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS in TECHNOLOGY & BIOLOGY will transform not just:
  • Mental Health, 
  • Brain Injury,
  • Developmental Disability
  • Substance Use
  • Criminal Justice, 
  • Education &
  • Employment
It will represent one of the great Societal Transformations of History -- and it's taking place not just in the US but around the World.
The DSM-5 lists twenty-two categories of mental disorders. With nine hundred pages of diagnostic material, it warns “this set of categorical diagnoses does not fully describe the full range of mental disorders that individuals experience and present to clinicians on a daily basis throughout the world.”

Indeed, diagnoses may have overlapping symptoms and similar presentations. And it is unlikely that complex circumstances associated with criminal behavior are fairly represented in the diagnostic criteria.

Thus, the likelihood of diagnosis agreement among mental
health experts is low.

To understand the degree of diagnostic agreement among adversarial mental health experts, Professors Matthew Large and Olav Nielssen studied experts’ reports
in sixty-seven personal injury cases where there were opposing experts.

The Large/Nielssen study demonstrates that skepticism about forensic mental health diagnoses is justified. There is poor agreement about both the presence of any given mental disorder and all specific psychiatric diagnoses in reports written by experts from opposing parties. Experts from the same parties had a greater degree of agreement about the presence of a psychiatric disorder but fair agreement about a specific diagnosis.

The findings suggest the presence of both bias and error and suggest even “well-credentialed” psychiatrists and psychologists can reach an incorrect diagnosis.
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Despite skepticism about reliability of evidence of mental disorders and frequent diagnostic disagreement, mental health testimony is a common feature in criminal cases.