This weekend, 20 people from around the country will meet in a nondescript hotel room in Arlington, Va., and take a vote. A passing stranger who stumbled on this group wouldn’t see much of anything, just a bunch of graying academic types sitting around a table.
But millions of people will be touched by that vote because the graying academic types are voting to approve the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual — the bible of psychiatry.
The DSM, published by the American Psychiatric Association, is an enormous tome that defines every mental disorder. And in defining every mental disorder, it helps determine many other things, such as how struggling children are treated in school.
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