DSM-5 Manual Analysis

The DSM IV-TR, published by the American Psychiatric Association, is the authoritative book for clinicians, psychiatrists, therapists and other healthcare professionals who diagnose mental disorders. It lists the diagnostic criteria and features, differential diagnoses, course and prevalence of the disease. It is the go-t

This diversity in the professions that contribute to the criteria found in the DSM-5 can only assist in assuring the validity of the disorders presented within it. The disorders contained in the manual all have a series of specific requirements that an individual must

(312) When answering the question we first need to understand what reliability and validity means and why it is important to include them in the criteria to judge DSM-5. Reliability is the consistency of the assessment measurements throughout the test. Whereas validity is when the test actually measures what it is suppose to measure (Comer, 2013, pp.84). Now that we know what reliability and validity are we can now apply it to DSM-5, but what is DSM-5? DSM-5 is shortened from Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Of mental Disorders and the five shows how much

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is currently the most frequently used way of standardizing and defining psychological disorders. However, the classification systems such as DSM have advantages and disadvantages. The major weakness of DSM is that it judges symptoms superficially and ignores other possible important factors. The major strength of DSM is that it enables categorization of psychological disorders.

The strengths when working with clients on a medical model perspective is that the use of the DSM provides a common language to use in the medical community. The DSM provides reliability and structural guideline to each mental disorder. The structural guidelines in the DSM provide an organized list of criteria and specifiers to help determine the severity of the mental disorder. When diagnosing a client, there are many similar signs and symptoms to each mental disorder; thus, the DSM provides the clinician information about differential diagnosis, prevalence, possible co-morbidity, age of onset, and progressive development of symptoms. Hence, focusing on the medical model and using the DSM can be beneficial to both the client and the clinician providing treatment.

While reading over the introduction to the DSM-5 I was impressed. I have never looked at any DSM or really any mental health disorders thus far in my studies. I was mostly impressed with the strive to continue making the DSM more useful and understanding. Some things that are in the introduction to the DSM-5 that caught my attention was that the Task Force was very involved in trying to find a balance between the different disorders without confusing them together (p. 5). Another point that I found important was that the overall goal for the DSM-5 was “the degree to which two clinicians could independently arrive at the same diagnosis for a given patient” (American Psychiatric Association, 2013, p. 7). This is a strong reasoning to improve the DSM and I am actually stocked that it took this long to change things because Robert Spritzer (a psychiatrist of the twentieth century who became have a strong part in developing the DSM-III and the DSM-IIIR), back in 1974 noticed the central issue being the problem of diagnosis and psychiatrists not being able to agree on the same disorders (Spiegel, 2005).

The statistics and facts above have demonstrated that removing Asperger’s Disorder from the DSM-5, as a mental health diagnosis, negatively affects an entire population of people, referred to as Aspies. The underlying issue is the power the DSM-5 manual has on overall mental health to determine identities, diagnosis, treatment health and mental health services, educational services and more. One DSM change has power to affect an entire population of people with developmental disabilities. It is important to understand how this affects our society as a whole by examining how this problem affects family, religion, government, and economy.

The DSM is used as a standard of reference for psychological diagnosis. The DSM was originally published in 1952 containing only 106 diagnoses; today the revised DSM-IV-TR contains 365 diagnoses. Throughout the history of the DSM, individuals in the mental health profession have relied on it for clarification of disorders, facilitating research, improving communication with other professionals and improving the collection of clinical information. With a new DSM-V underway, there has been a lot of issues surrounding the contents and classifications of the new DSM. There are

DSM-IV-TR- is the official classification system of mental disorders used by counselors, psychologist, social workers, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals in the United States. It is used across settings (inpatient, outpatient, partial hospital, private practice and primary care) and with community populations. (Drummond, 2010). The DSM-5 is a very complex assessment where counselors are required to have extensive preparation in the understanding of mental disorders, certain factors can take in place when administering this test and errors can be made such as misdiagnosing or over diagnosing if not properly administered.

The DSM diagnostic process can be broken down into six essential steps. Step one consists of ruling out Malingering and Factitious Disorder. Step two entails ruling out a substance etiology. Step three involves ruling out an etiological medical condition. Step four consists of determining the specific primary disorder(s). Step five comprises differentiating Adjustment Disorder from the residual Other Specified and Unspecified conditions. Step six involves establishing the boundary with no mental disorder. These six steps provide a diagnostic framework for clinicians to diagnose clients accurately.

The DSM is a classified system used by psychiatrist and other clinical professions in order to diagnose clients and patients who show signs of some type of disorder. The two advantages of using this model or classification system ranges from the validity of an assessment used by clinicians and other health care professionals. Build around the concepts and purposes for the DSM model is that it supports a number of standard assessments of diagnosing different treatment providers. Furthermore, (Comer, J. 2016) suggest that the DSM-5 requires clinicians to provide both categorical and dimensional information which is part of being consistent in diagnosing. From a categorical perspective this refers to the name of a particular category of a disorder which is indicated on behalf of the client’s symptoms. From the dimensional perspective it is a rating of how the client symptoms and the severity of the dysfunction through various dimensions.

The DSM 5 is divided into three sections and it is these three sections that the clinicians use to help their clients. The first section is DSM-5 Basics. In the Basics, there is the introduction which tells why the DSM-5 was created and it states that this book was to “enhance the clinical usefulness of DSM-5 as a guide in the diagnosis of mental disorders” (Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: DSM-5, 2013, p. 5). The

DSM-IV TR, which stands for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th edition), Text Revision was published by the American Psychiatric Association in 2000 and serves as a guide book for many health professionals to diagnose a patient with a mental disorder. It also helps health professionals to determine what types of treatment could be carried out to help the patient. The latest DSM is widely used, especially in the USA and many European countries.1However, it may not be completely followed by health professionals as they know that there are some weaknesses of the latest version of DSM as well. This essay will discuss the strengths and

The DSM is a guide that helps facilitate communication between mental health clinicians. With the help of this manual clients are able to be diagnosed and treated with accuracy and facsimile. I feel that I would be able to benefit from having access to a client's DSM information because it would give me further insight on the clients mental and physical health and on the client as a person.

While reviewing the article Diagnosing for Status and Money, Summary of the Critique of the DSM, a few things seemed to jump off the page. The DSM-5 while a well written and no longer intimidating to me appears to have a slant towards managed care organizations vice actual counselors. Having a manual that provides simplistic codes universally used between doctors that treat physical ailments and those who treat psychological ailments is critical; however, the focus must always be the patient. The text contains subjective qualifiers which provides the counselor the ability to use multiple diagnosis, either over diagnosing or underdiagnosing. The DSM-5 appears to provide care from a medication management prospective over psychotherapy