Word: problems
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...Address the problem of including certain minor addiction disorders (caffeine intoxication) but excluding others (compulsive gambling). These are relatively infrequent diagnoses, but they seem highly capricious. Isn't compulsive gambling a sign of a bigger problem? Isn't caffeine intoxication usually an accident? That's one reason the whole category of "substance-related disorders" has chipped away at the authority of the DSM. The new DSM would rationalize the system. There are no plans to change the diagnostic criteria of "caffeine intoxication" (essentially, drinking so much coffee or Red Bull that you go nuts, at least temporarily...
...Contain the definition of a mental illness within sensible borders. A major problem with earlier versions was mission creep: In 1980, the APA published DSM-III, which radically expanded what clinicians could define as disordered. One example: depression. The pre-1980 definition had described "depressive neurosis" as "an excessive reaction of depression due to an internal conflict or to an identifiable event such as the loss of a love object." The much longer 1980 definition (which carried on into DSM-IV and DSM-IV-TR, with slight modifications) omitted the requirement that symptoms be "excessive" in proportion to cause...
...criteria make sense: sexual fantasies take up so much time that they become repetitive, debilitating and harmful to normal functioning. Also, "sexual avoidance disorder" would be dropped and "transvestic fetishism" would become "transvestic disorder," although the diagnostic criteria themselves would not change: the DSM still seems to have a problem with cross-dressing...
...annual pass, being imposed on local visitors will be one of the casinos biggest obstacles. "The entry levy is meant to signal that gambling is an expense, not a means to make a living," explains Lim Hock San, Chairman of the National Council on Problem Gambling. "It discourages impulse gambling." Though betting on horse races is allowed in Singapore, the government strictly controls other forms of gambling, one of the reasons it plans to allow only two casinos to operate on the small island. The families of gambling addicts can also apply for their loved ones to be excluded from...
...other problem, according to Georg Lutz, a Swiss politics expert at the Social Science Research Center in Lausanne, is that "even the most ridiculous issues" can be forced on the electorate, as was the case in 1996 when a proposal was put forth to abolish federal subsidies for parking spaces near train stations. A few years ago, a joke made the rounds that an initiative should be held on whether to raze the Alps so the Swiss people could see the ocean. (Regrettably for beach lovers, this never came to pass.) Joking aside, experts say the countless ballots can lead...