With the release of the latest edition of the mental health manual, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), Medical Daily examines some new additions to the list of mental disorders.

As the standard classification of mental disorders, DSM is used by mental health professionals in the United States - and much of the world - in order to reliably diagnose mental disorders. The handbook also provides a common language for professionals and researchers to communicate with one another.

Before the creation of DSM, there was little agreement on how mental disorders should be classified. In the United States, in what's considered the first official attempt to collect mental health information, the 1840 census noted the frequency of "idiocy/insanity." Forty years later, in 1880, seven categories of mental health had been created: mania, melancholia, monomania, paresis, dementia, dipsomania, and epilepsy.

Post-World War II, the World Health Organization (WHO) published its sixth edition of International Classification of Diseases (ICD), which included a mental disorders section. The ICD-6 received some tweaks, published in 1952 as the first edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual: Mental Disorders (DSM-I). Through the decades, DSM underwent additional revisions and corrections, resulting in the DSM-II, DSM-III, DSM-III-R, and DSM-IV, in order to compensate for new research and knowledge on mental disorders.

Mental health professionals and researchers in the United States refer to the DSM to diagnose a wide range of disorders, including behavioral, cognitive, and interpersonal ones, as well as to collect accurate public health statistics. The DSM includes three components: diagnostic classification, diagnostic criteria sets, and descriptive text.

The diagnostic classification is a list of the mental disorders to which mental health professionals can refer. Experts can make a patient diagnosis by selecting disorders from the list that best match signs and symptoms exhibited by a patient.

Diagnostic criteria sets indicate the symptoms that must be present in a patient, including the duration of these symptoms, along with the conditions that should not be present.

The American Psychiatric Association recruited experts in various areas of knowledge, including neuroscience, biology, genetics, and social and behavioral science to revise DSM for the fifth edition.

The goal of DSM-5 focuses on incorporating scientific advances in research and changes to disorders so that symptoms and behaviors of certain groups of people can be better diagnosed.

Click above to learn more about some new additions to the list of mental disorders.