Many conditions we're now familiar with were codified in the DSM, including body dismorphic disorder, schizophrenia and bipolar.

Inclusions and removals can be hugely controversial. Autism is in the manual, for example, but Asperger's isn't. Homosexuality was only removed in 1974.

Below, five experts explain some of the most noteworthy new additions, and why they've been included.

Hoarding disorder

David Mataix-Cols: Most children have collections at some point and approximately 30% of British adults define themselves as collectors. This is a pleasurable, highly social and benign activity, which contrasts with another disabling form of object accumulation: hoarding disorder.

The symptoms include persistent difficulty in discarding possessions due to a strong perceived need to save items and distress in discarding them. This results in the accumulation of a large number of possessions that fill up and clutter key living areas of the home, to the extent that their intended use is no longer possible.

Symptoms are often accompanied by excessive acquiring, buying or even stealing of items that are not needed or for which there is no available space.

Using DSM-5, hoarding disorder can only be diagnosed once other mental disorders have been ruled out.

With a prevalence of at least 1.5% of the UK population, the disorder is associated with substantial functional disability, family conflict, social isolation, risk of falls and fires, evictions and homelessness.

Binge eating disorder

Christopher Fairburn: The inclusion of binge eating disorder in DSM-5 was expected and uncontroversial for the deciding committee. It's already listed as a provisional diagnosis in DSM-IV.

The disorder is characterised by recurrent over-eating episodes and a sense of loss of control at the time. Sufferers don't have the extreme dieting, vomiting and laxative misuse seen in people who have bulimia. It is the loss of control over eating that is the distressing feature of binge eating disorder, or BED. Continue reading

Sources

• The Conversation
• Image: Sergei Yolkin's World, Voices from Russia
• See also: "Medicine's big new battleground: does mental illness really exist?" in The Guardian

According to Dr Siale Foliaki, New Zealand's first Tongan consultant psychiatrist, who was involved in the study, "People born in the Pacific have 50 per cent less rates of mental disorder compared to their relatives born in New Zealand and I think those rates would probably apply to Australian born Polynesians or American born Polynesians,"

The high suicide risk for young Pacific people has prompted Pasifikology, a network of Pasifika psychologists, graduates and psychology students to host a symposium on suicide at a conference in Auckland in early April.

The symposium will be part of the GPS 2012: Growing Pacific Solutions for our families conference. The conference is the first ever conference aimed specifically at addressing mental health, addiction and disability issues within New Zealand's Pacific community. It has been organised by Le Va, Pasifika within Te Pou - the national centre for mental health, addiction and disability workforce development.

Dr Monique Faleafa, national manager of Le Va and a member of Pasifikology said for the Pacific suicide statistics to change, Pacific people in New Zealand must be part of the solution.

"The New Zealand suicide prevention strategy clearly identifies that suicide prevention strategies aimed at Pacific peoples need to be tailored for those peoples, and mindful of specific cultural contexts and beliefs," Dr Faleafa said.

"It makes no sense to develop solutions which are not based in a cultural context."

New Zealand is home to the world's largest population of Pacific Islanders, with 265,974 identifying as Pacific at the last Census. Sixty per cent of those were born here.

Auckland is the biggest Pacific city in the world - a third of the country's Pacific Islanders live in Manukau with the second and third largest populations in Auckland City and Waitakere City respectively.

Source

• Press Release - Pasifikology
• Radio Australia Network News
• image: Blogspsychcentral.com