Psychiatric Diagnoses are categorised by the DSM-IV which stands for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition This manual is published by the American Psychiatric Association. It covers all mental health disorders for both children and adults and is considered to be the ultimate guide for doctors and insurance companies. It is currently in the final stages of being revised for DSM-5.
The chair of the DSM-IV Task force was Allen J Frances, MD. He was chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine and is currently Professor Emeritus there. He has grave concerns about the new revision of DSM-IV, as he explains in this article at Psychology Today. Dec 8th 2012. Here. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dsm5-in-distress/201212/mislabeling-medical-illness-mental-disorder
“…Adding to the woes of the medically ill could be one of the biggest problems caused by DSM 5. It will do this in two ways: 1) by encouraging a quick jump to the erroneous conclusion that someone’s physical symptoms are ‘all in the head’; and 2) by mislabeling as mental disorders what are really just the normal emotional reactions that people understandably have in response to a medical illness…”