ABSTRACT
The memo was addressed to the chairman of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA's) Council on Research and Development, one of the many committees in the chain of command between the APA governing board and the group that would actually revise the manual. As the board recommended, national concerns, particularly about children, were given much greater emphasis than an attempt to coordinate the new revision of the manual with the next edition of International Classification of Disease (ICD), which was the medical classification system devised by the United Nations for reporting medical disorders. The principal reason for publishing DSM-II was to create a manual that would mesh with ICD, which the United States was required, by international treaty, to use for statistics-keeping purposes, but this objective was given very low priority for DSM-III. In hindsight, the idea that the makers of the manual would let this important Issue escape their control is ironic.
