The DSM has served many functions -- 40 years ago it was mostly a social-control mechanism, definining uppity wives, queers, and the "overly sensitive" as sick people in need ot "treatment" (i.e. drugging, lobotomising, torture).  These days it seems to have morphed into a marketing mechanism, getting padded out every year by more and more "syndromes" that have been "identified" mostly by pharmacorps looking for more ways to market more pills.

This is not exactly a technical article but it covers some of the turf

I could pull together quite a few more links if anyone is interested in the drugging of America.  Particularly the drugging of children makes me almost too angry to speak.  I am reminded inevitably of Hogarth's engravings, the slum mothers spooning gin into the mouths of their wailing babies to shut them up, to silence the cries of hunger or cold or boredom.  And antidepressants for adults are ubiquitous;  seems like at least a third of the people I know in the US are on them or have been on them for extended periods.  To be undrugged -- neither pharmaceutically nor recreationally -- seems to be becoming exceptional.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...