When the American Psychiatric Association (APA) released its new manual of psychiatric condition diagnoses in May, some employment lawyers sounded an alarm. The so-called DSM-5 added new categories of diagnoses and loosened the criteria for others, raising concerns it could trigger more requests for workplace accommodation.
“The DSM-5 is the ‘bible’ for diagnosing psychiatric or mental disorders, and it adds more than a dozen new diagnoses [to its predecessor, DSM-4],” says Terry Dawson, a partner at Barnes & Thornburg. “In short, the DSM-5 may expand the types of behavior that might be considered a disability under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA).”
