What Is The DSM System?

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 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

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 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 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.

Even though the DSM has harsh critics surrounding the subject of diagnosis, there are those who find that the DSM is beneficial when treating clients. As previously mentioned, Clegg (2012) believes that the DSM can be utilized in various agencies and areas of social work. Social workers from different theoretical perspectives find that the DSM is approachable. The manual outlines the symptoms and diagnostic criteria surrounding a disorder. In addition, the manual highlights intervention plans for the diagnosis. These interventions can assist clients and/or their families in overcoming a diagnosis. Lastly, when clients experience symptoms of a mental disorder for the first time, they may feel defeated and unsure of where these symptoms are originating. When clinicians can diagnose their

Another DSM category is bereavement which has been treated over the years by considering normal grief not pathological, therefore the DSM repathologiesed it and allow people to go to psychiatrist when they lose someone in their life and the psychiatrist diagnoses them for their lose even though it might be a normal self limiting kind of sadness.

DSM is diagnosed by a mental health care professional and physicians that careful evaluation the client for depression. The client will have to have more than sadness and a presence of depression. There will be a lot of information gather before the patient will be diagnosed with DSM. The patient will undergo a medical exam, a clinical interview and assessments and the diagnosed generally lies with a physician or a senior staff person, usually with a PhD.

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

From time to time we all have periods of sadness, unhappy thoughts. Among the United States population, around eight to ten percent suffer from a form of depression as unipolar depression. Depressive and bipolar disorders show to be a principal cause of disability, without cure a person can have a tough experience with relationships, work, and social activities. Substance abuse disorders are becoming an rampant. The need for instant indulgence has become more and more widespread in the world. The DSM-5 shows the symptoms checklist for diagnosis of substance abuse disorder (see table 1.3 in appendix a), and according to Comer, (2014) “the substances people misuse fall into several categories: depressants, stimulants, hallucinogens, and cannabis”

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