From the University of Michigan Medical School.
Original manuscript received 2 September 2015; revised manuscript received 28 January 2016, accepted for publication 18 March 2016.
*Editor’s note: This article is published posthumously; the author died 18 April 2016.
Disclosure: The author of this manuscript was asked to be a consultant to the Personality and Personality Disorders Work Group (PPDWG) for the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in the last year of the group’s existence, from November 2011 through December 2012. He was not a member of the original committee, and by the time he and another colleague joined the PPDWG, a major revision of the PPDWG’s original proposal had been undertaken. Prior to the consultants joining the PPDWG, two members of the original group had already resigned, and whatever conflict or tension that allegedly existed within the PPDWG had disappeared. During the period that the author was a consultant to that group, the primary remaining task for the group was to prepare the PPDWG’s proposals for review by two committees prior to the proposal going forward to the full DSM-5 Task Force and also to the Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association for final approval or rejection. During the workings of the PPDWG, two (overlapping) groups of approximately 30 professionals not on the PPDWG signed and sent two letters to the PPDWG objecting to its process and proposals. The author of this commentary signed both of those letters prior to his joining the PPDWG as a consultant.
doi: 10.1097/HRP.0000000000000094
