Preliminary Draft of the DSM-V

Preliminary Draft of the DSM-V Committee on Cyber Disorders

The Cyber Disorders section includes disorders that have a dependency upon cyber existence as the predominant feature. The section is divided into three parts. The first part describes e-mail episodes that serve as the building blocks for the disorder diagnoses. The second part describes the Cyber Disorders themselves. The criteria sets for most of the Cyber Disorders require the presence or absence of the e-mail episodes described in the first part of the section. The third part includes the specifiers that describe either the most recent e-mail episode, or the course of recurrent episodes.

The Cyber Disorders are divided into Posting Disorders, Flaming Disorders and CC Disorders. The Posting Disorders (i.e. Lurking Disorder, Chronic Posting Disorder and Posting Disorder not Otherwise Specified) are distinguished from the Flaming Disorders by the fact that there is no history of ever having posted a Flame, or Flame-with-Apology. CC Disorders (CC-All Disorder and Spam Disorder) may include episodes of Chronic Posting, Flames, and/or Flame-With-Apologies but can be distinguished by the number of addressees.

Lurking Disorder is characterized by one or more episodes of lurking (i.e. at least two weeks of lurking or loss of interest in answering mail accompanied by at least four additional symptoms of Lurking including high on-line time balances, walking away from the computer while logged on, composing posts and deleting them without sending them, etc.)

Chronic Posting Disorder is characterized by at least 4 weeks of posting to a newsgroup or listserv more days than not, accompanied by additional Cyber symptoms such as checking mail several times per day, posts in which the content is shorter than the message header or sig, and messages of extreme anxiety when list volume drops.

Posting Disorder not Otherwise Specified is included for coding disorders with posting features that do not meet the criteria for Lurking Disorder or Chronic Posting Disorder.

Flaming Disorder is characterized by one or more episodes of hot-tempered posts, usually posted within seconds of receiving the ‘trigger’ message, but can be distinguished from the Flame-With-Apology in that the sender has a sincere belief that he/she is 100% correct and morally entitled to his/her feelings of outrage. Flaming Disorder is often accompanied by Chronic Posting Disorder.

Flame-With-Apology Disorder is a milder form of the Flaming Disorder, in which the poster sincerely apologizes for the first portion of the message and yet sends it anyway. A variation of Flame-With-Apology exists in which posters staunchly defend their position for 3 to 4 days, then abruptly back down and revert to Chronic Posting or Lurking.

The specifiers described in the third part of the section are provided to increase diagnostic specificity, create more homogeneous subgroups, assist in treatment selection, and improve the prediction of prognosis. Some of the specifiers describe the current or most recent episode (i.e. Pine, Elm, Anonymous, With Humorous Features, and With Uncomplicated Internet Access).

From Mental Health Humour

Top ten signs you are approaching burn-out,
For mental health workers.

by Storm A. King
August 1996

10) You think of the peaceful park you like as “your private therapeutic milieu.”

9) You realize that your floridly psychotic patient, who is picking invisible flowers out of mid air, is probably having more fun in life than you are.

8.) A grateful client, who thinks you walk on water, brings you a small gift and you end up having to debrief your feelings of unworthiness with a colleague.

7) You are watching a re-run of the “Wizard of Oz” and you start to categorize the types of delusions that Dorothy had.

6) Your best friend comes to you with severe relationship troubles, and you start trying to remember which cognitive behavioral technique has the most empirical validly for treating this problem.

5) You realize you actually have no friends, they have all become just one big case load.

4) A co-worker asks how you are doing and you reply that you are a bit “internally preoccupied” and “not able to interact with peers” today.

3) Your spouse asks you to set the table and you tell them that it would be “countertherapeutic to your current goals” to do that.

2) You tell your teenage daughter she is not going to start dating boys because she is “in denial”, ”lacks insight.” and her “emotions are not congruent with her chronological age.”

And, the number one reason you may be burning out….

1) You are packing for a trip to a large family holiday reunion and you take the DSM-IV with you “just in case.”