It is interesting that the "famous" symptoms are the ones we aren't all having.

I remember blocking someone from my blog reader feed once because she'd been given a mood stabilizer and joked that if she was going to be treated as bipolar (I don't think she was diagnosed) she at least should have had some sexual fun. I didn't find it funny.

They did accept patient input before the new DSM came out. I don't think they necessarily listened but input was taken for a time. I do not trust how that whole book was done though. My therapist was a tester for the bipolar diagnosis and symptoms. He had a bunch of computer training and then since I was his established bipolar patient I did a computer assessment that was so badly done that I couldn't tell what some questions were asking. Then we had to go through a LOT of questions he asked me and he had to fill out things on the computer for that and then it was all submitted. We were supposed to do a follow-up in a few weeks. The selected so many testers indicating they planned to use so many tests but then they cut off the data collection before my 2nd round was done. It appeared to be cut off arbitrarily. Which makes me distrust DSM-V a lot. They used my first data so how could they not use the 2nd half to get the complete pairing? It made no sense.