While Montgomery didn't require prescription medications, even DSM-5 protesters acknowledge that there are people whose disorders demand such intensive intervention, perhaps throughout their lifetime.

Still, critics say the upcoming manual veers in the wrong direction.

"The DSM-5, in many ways, reflects the politics of psychiatry these days," said Dr. Joel Paris, author of "Prescriptions for the Mind: A Critical View of Contemporary Psychiatry," a psychiatry professor at McGill University and researcher at Mortimer B. Davis-Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, Quebec.

"Everybody has a kind of investment in certain diagnoses. Those who are studying a particular disorder often are saying, 'Well, this is much more common than you think they are. Oh, the prevalence is very high.' But we risk losing legitimacy because of over-diagnosis. ... The fact is that most people get by with bad patches in their lives. They recover."