DSM-5 (previously known as DSM-V) is the planned fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It is due for publication in May 2013 and will supersede the DSM-IV which was last revised in 2000. APA has an official development website for posting of draft versions of the DSM-5.

In 1999, a DSM–5 Research Planning Conference, sponsored jointly by APA and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), was held to set the research priorities. Research Planning Work Groups produced "white papers" on the research needed to inform and shape the DSM-V^{[clarification needed]} and the resulting work and recommendations were reported in an APA monograph and peer-reviewed literature. There were six workgroups, each focusing on a broad topic: Nomenclature, Neuroscience and Genetics, Developmental Issues and Diagnosis, Personality and Relational Disorders, Mental Disorders and Disability, and Cross-Cultural Issues. Three additional white papers were also due by 2004 concerning gender issues, diagnostic issues in the geriatric population, and mental disorders in infants and young children. The white papers have been followed by a series of conferences to produce recommendations relating to specific disorders and issues, with attendance limited to 25 invited researchers.

Temple Grandin (born August 29, 1947) is an American doctor of animal science and professor at Colorado State University, bestselling author, and consultant to the livestock industry on animal behavior. As a person with high-functioning autism, Grandin is also noted for her work in autism advocacy and is the inventor of the squeeze machine designed to calm hypersensitive people.

The subject of an award-winning biographical film, Temple Grandin, in 2010 she was listed in the Time 100 list of the 100 most influential people in the world in the "Heroes" category.

Grandin was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Richard Grandin and Eustacia Cutler, and diagnosed with autism at age 2 in 1950. Diagnosed and labeled with brain damage, at that early age she was placed in a structured nursery school with what she considers to have been good teachers. Grandin's mother spoke to a doctor who suggested speech therapy, and she hired a nanny who spent hours playing turn-based games with Grandin and her sister.^{[citation needed]}

Allen J. "Al" Frances (born 1942) is an American psychiatrist. He was chair of the DSM-IV Task Force. He also served as Chair of the department of psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine. He is currently professor emeritus at Duke.

Frances co-authored Am I Okay?: A Layman's Guide to the Psychiatrist's Bible with psychiatrist Michael First.

Frances has been critical of proposed revisions to the DSM-5. In a 2010 Wired interview, therapist Gary Greenberg wrote, "The fact that diseases can be invented (or, as with homosexuality, uninvented) and their criteria tweaked in response to social conditions is exactly what worries critics like Frances about some of the disorders proposed for the DSM-5—not only attenuated psychotic symptoms syndrome but also binge eating disorder, temper dysregulation disorder, and other 'sub-threshold' diagnoses."