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The publication of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has considerable implications for social work practice, teaching and research. Like its predecessors, the DSM-5 contains some fundamental flaws in terms of weak scientific foundations, logical errors, and an unwarranted justification of the scope of psychiatric practice far beyond the areas in which medical doctors are specifically trained. Additional new problems are now found in the DSM-5, including, most fundamentally, its definition of mental disorder. This paper reviews some of these significant problems with the DSM-5 in the hope that Korean social workers who make use of this document, as well as social workers around the world, do so with an awareness of the significant limitations of this particular method of assessing and diagnosing problems in overt behavior, affect, and cognition.
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