The APA recently put out an RFP on their website for field trial site recruitment to start gaining real-world insights into the impact of the proposed changes to the DSM-V.  Here is an excerpt from the story on their website:

APA DSM-5 Development

“The DSM-5 Task Force is requesting proposals from academic and large general psychiatric, mental health specialty, and medical specialty settings to participate in the field trials of proposed DSM-5 diagnostic criteria, cross-cutting dimensional measures, and diagnostic-specific severity measures.  Our objective is to assure that these proposed changes are subjected to rigorous and empirically sound field trials before DSM is released for general clinical and research use. As such, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) plans to field test the clinical utility, feasibility, reliability, and, where possible, validity of selected DSM-5 draft diagnostic criteria and associated dimensional measures across a variety of clinical settings. The initial phase of these field trials is set to begin in the summer of 2010 and continue through February 2011. The disorders selected for study in field trials include those with high public health significance and/or those with significant proposed changes to the diagnostic criteria.  A list of the diagnoses planned for testing in the field trials can be found here.  We are limiting this first round of contracted sites to U.S. locations but will consider international sites for the second wave of field trials.  However, if international sites believe that they have the resources to carry out this wave 1 protocol, we will be happy to discuss how we can facilitate their participation.

An additional field trial in routine clinical practice settings covering all DSM-5 disorders will be conducted separately with a focus on clinical utility and feasibility but without a test-retest or validity component. This additional field trial will enroll a randomly selected sample of individual multidisciplinary clinicians as well as a sample who volunteer to participate.  International participation will be feasible for the volunteer component of this “Practice Research Network” protocol, which will start later in the fall of 2010. The detailed protocol for this version of the field trial is available upon request.”

Continue reading this story at the APA website…

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