Emil Kraepelin (15 February 1856, Neustrelitz – 7 October 1926, Munich) was a German psychiatrist. H.J. Eysenck's Encyclopedia of Psychology identifies him as the founder of modern scientific psychiatry, as well as of psychopharmacology and psychiatric genetics. Kraepelin believed the chief origin of psychiatric disease to be biological and genetic malfunction. His theories dominated psychiatry at the start of the twentieth century and, despite the later psychodynamic influence of Sigmund Freud and his disciples, appeared to enjoy a revival at century's end.

Kraepelin, the son of a civil servant, was born in 1856 in Neustrelitz, in the Mecklenburg district of Germany. He was first introduced to biology by his brother Karl, 10 years older and, later, the director of the Zoological Museum of Hamburg.

Kraepelin began his medical studies at 18, in Leipzig and Wurzburg, Germany. At Leipzig, he studied neuropathology under Paul Flechsig and experimental psychology with Wilhelm Wundt. Kraepelin would be a disciple of Wundt and had a life long interest in experimental psychology based on his theories. While there, Kraepelin wrote a prize-winning essay, "The Influence of Acute Illness in the Causation of Mental Disorders." He received his medical degree (M.D.) in 1878. In 1879, he went to work with Bernhard von Gudden at the University of Munich, where he completed his thesis, "The Place of Psychology in Psychiatry". Returning to the University of Leipzig in 1882, he worked in Wilhelm Heinrich Erb's neurology clinic and in Wundt's psychopharmacology laboratory.

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."