I’m finally catching up on some of my “must read” articles. Tonight I got a chance to read an article on a new possible diagnostic system for eating disorders in the DSM-V. “Broad Categories for the Diagnosis of Eating Disorders (BCD-ED): An Alternative System for Classification.”  You could go ahead and download it – the full text is available online for free – but I can sum the whole thing up in a couple of words:
Take the DSM-IV and add water.
Basically the new system expands each eating disorder …

I’m going to avoid diving into labeling theory… but I think that diagnoses are ultimately meant to guide treatment. You’re really saying “here are a cluster of common symptoms” so that you can research and treat individuals with those characteristics. It’s not adequate to just describe someone as being sad, because the other presenting symptoms make a huge difference.

My new FAVORITE article.
Diagnostic Crossover in Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa:
Implications for DSM-V
(Am J Psychiatry 2008; 165:245–250)
I actually think this whole study was amazing and definitely recommend reading it if you can (and I’m always a skeptic, so this is rare that I’d say this).  That said, I don’t think that the study does much for defining, validating, or invalidating the ED-NOS diagnosis.
 I think that this is brilliant, and should be used for actual diagnosis… not just as a measure in this study:
The Eating Disorders Longitudinal Interval Follow-up Evaluation was …