Frederick Wines publishes the "Report on the Defective, Dependent and Delinquent Classes of the Population of the United States"
1888. Frederick Wines publishes the "Report on the Defective, Dependent and Delinquent Classes of the Population of the United States." This report contains findings from the United States' 1880 census, and was influential in the eventual creation of the DSM, or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, by the American Psychiatric Association, which was used to classify mental disorders.
Frederick Wines was assigned to look over the 1880 census, as tasked by superintendent of the census Francis A. Walker, who changed census collection to include much more information about that could be tied to public policy issues (Deyoung, n.d.). Wines was tasked to examine dependency, and the result was a 582 page report published 8 years later. Wines' report examined relationships between mental illness and variables such as race, gender, age, etc. (Deyoung, n.d.). Seven categories were described in the 1880 census (dementia, dispsomania, epilepsy, mania, melancholia, monomania, and paresis), and eventually the categories were adopted by the American Psychiatrists Association with some criticism (as the system did not take into account etiology) (Deyoung, n.d.). This publication is considered important to the history of the DSM, whose classification was used in eugenic practices.
-Colette Leung and Amy Dyrbye
Deyoung, N. (n.d.). Before the DSM. Retrieved from: https://sites.google.com/site/psych54000/a