The revised edition of the DSM-5 that was released in March, the DSM-5-TR, is now ranked No. 1 on Amazon's psychiatry bestseller list, Axios reported June 14.
Experts speculate that the rapid sales increase comes from an increased public interest in mental illness and increase of depression and anxiety symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic, reported by the CDC.
However, this uptick in sales isn't solely based on public interest and curiosity.
"There's a growing tendency to over-diagnose and 'medicalize' normal anxieties and run-of-the-mill neuroses," Ralph Lewis, MD, a psychiatrist in Toronto, wrote in Psychology Today.
The manual's popularity has grown among medical professionals of other disciplines too.
"I've had friends who are surgeons, internists, all of a sudden saying to me, 'So, I bought the book,'" Saul Levin, MD, CEO of the American Psychiatric Association, told Axios.