In 2010, prior to the publishing of DSM-5, a paper entitled ‘Should OCD be classified as an Anxiety disorder in DSM-V?’, surveyed authors of OCD publications internationally. However, some experts controversially suggested that the revised edition of the DSM remove OCD from this category and group it with loosely related conditions under the heading of ‘ Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders‘, which is what they did indeed do for DSM-5. The previous edition of the DSM (DSM-IV) categorised Obsessive-Compulsive-Disorder (OCD) under ‘Anxiety Disorders’. Significantly, in DSM-5 there was a significant and controversial change to where OCD was listed. There have been six revisions since it was first published in 1952, the last major revision was ‘DSM-5’, published in May 2013, superseding DSM-IV, which was published in 1994 and revised in 2000. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is published by the American Psychiatric Association and provides clinicians with official definitions of, and criteria for, diagnosing mental disorders.
