Different Types Of Mental Disorders

Mental Illness has been prevalent all throughout our history from Isaac Newton to Abraham Lincoln to Sylvia Plath and so on. These illnesses can be as minor as a slight bipolar disorder or as severe as schizophrenia. In recent years, mental illnesses are becoming more prevalent in our criminal justice systems than anywhere else. Mental illness is becoming an association with crime and based on the information that has been found, this paper will attempt to further define the problem of mental illness within our criminal justice system and offer alternatives or insights as to how to possibly help with this problem.

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

The deinstitutionalization of state mental hospitals has left many individuals untreated and in the community where there come under police scrutiny due to their odd behavior, that is a manifestation of their illness. Majority of mentally ill offenders have not committed a serious crime and are subjected to inappropriate arrest and incarceration (Soderstrom, 2008). This new policy has become quite a concern to the fact that the correctional environment has proven to show no positive results in the mental health of the offender during their time of incarceration or upon their release date and thereafter (Soderstrom, 2008).

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.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has a number of features. First of all, every disorder is identified using a name and a numerical code. In addition, the manual provides the criteria for diagnosing each disorder as well as establishes subtypes of a disorder and examples that would illustrate the disorder. The manual goes further by addressing the typical age of onset, culturally related information, gender-related information, prevalence of a disorder, typical clinical course of a disorder, typical predisposing factors of a disorder and genetic family patterns of a disease (Summers, 2009). The DSM-IV is a tool that is used by mental health practitioners and social service workers. As has been demonstrated

Formal options (hospitalization and arrest) may be time consuming for the officer as well as not be in the best interest for the person that is mentally ill whereas, sometimes officers are sometimes left unable to resolve the matter informally because of the inexperience and unfamiliarity with de-escalation techniques. Law enforcement officers are trained to assess the situation and take the best course of action to resolve the issues, especially when dealing with the mental health community the goal is that the situation can be resolves peacefully. However, recent interactions between law enforcement agencies and mentally ill suspects have had some disappointing results (Teplin, 2000).

The scope of Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT) is limited due to the newness of this model being implemented in different police departments across the country. The CIT model is being implemented in over 400 programs with different aspects taken from the original model. (Draine,J.,Ottati,V.,Schaefer,M.Watson,A.2008)Focusing on the how police officers deal with the mentally ill, and the spread of the police based CIT programs.

The recent increase in emergency 9-1-1 calls involving mentally ill persons has heightened the awareness of the Criminal Justice System. Across the nation, law enforcement encounters with mentally ill persons have become more frequent, and the use of deadly force against mentally ill persons has increased. Since the deinstitutionalization of the mental health system, law enforcement officials have been tasked with controlling deviant and sometimes criminal behavior of persons who suffer from mental illness. As a result, law enforcement agencies have implemented crisis intervention training (CIT) and diversion tactics due to the numerous challenges faced when serving the mentally ill. Major deficiencies in the mental health system and State legislations have hindered progressive efforts towards assisting mentally ill persons. With the dramatic consequences associated with untreated mental illness, it is certain that law enforcement officers will experience an encounter requiring knowledge, specialized training, and the ability to build collaborative partnerships.

Mental illness in this manner is the belief that such illnesses can be identified and classified (As in the DSM & ICD)

From police interaction of the mentally ill, Crisis Intervention Training has been born with the focus on police officers being able to identify individuals who may be suffering from various type of mental illness. In addition to being able to identify if a person is suffering from a mental disorder, the training also teaches officers the skills to communicate with them in hopes to de-escalate the tense situation peacefully (Russell, 2012).

classification system: mood disorders, personality disorders, anxiety disorders, psychotic disorders,substance-related disorders, eating disorders, cognitive disorders

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.

Being able to form a diagnosis properly for a client is a process that is wide-ranging and broad. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013) supports recommendations and standards for identifying a diagnosis for a client. The procedure of diagnosing is more than skimming for symptoms in the DSM; one must assess, interview and identify issues, as well as refer to the DSM for a diagnosis.

illness has the potential to take full control over a person’s life, creating many obstacles from