From Bibles to Biomarkers: The Future of the DSM and Forensic Psychiatric Diagnosis

There is great anticipation for the RDoC’s neurobiological approach to mental  illness to replace the DSM and make everything from research funding to insurance  coverage more fair. Whether or not the legal applications of this new system will  indeed be an improvement on the DSM depends greatly on how it is used, and what  the normative commitments are in that particular legal domain. While the DSM provides one important and useful perspective on what counts as mentally  disordered, ultimately for the law this is not a question that science or data can  answer. Societies, comprised of people, must grapple with a normative account of  when to treat, when to pardon, and when to punish. The DSM cannot decide these  questions for us, tempting as it may be to defer to its diagnostic criteria. That we expect it to reveals a deep insecurity about the legal system’s ability to defend its  methods and theories of punishment.