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Diagnosis & Classification of Mental Disorders
Diagnosis: Mental disorders
Considerations when assessing psychiatric symptoms:
– Is there a mental illness and if so what is it?
Diagnosis: Mental disorders
‘mental disorder’?– Abnormalities of mood, emotion, cognition,
behaviour – Signs and symptoms are on continuum,
there’s no clear division between health and illness
– Manifestations vary age, gender, race
Diagnosis: Mental disorders
– Threshold for illness/disorder set by convention
– diagnosis linked to the definition of mental illness
– difficult to define and operationalise
Diagnosis: Mental disorders
No definitive lesion, laboratory test or abnormality of the brain tissues
Dependent on patient & family reports of intensity and duration of symptoms
Signs from clinician’s mental state assessment and observation of behaviour
Diagnosis: Mental disorders
These cues are grouped together by the clinician into recognisable patterns or syndromes
When a syndrome meets all the criteria for a diagnosis, it constitutes a mental disorder
Diagnosis: Mental disorders
Manifestations of mental disorders do not fall into distinct categories
Categories are broad and overlapping
Any particular patient may manifest symptoms from more than one category
Diagnosis: Mental disorders
Mental illness is heterogeneous- ever changing and difficult to characterise
Current psychiatric classifications are imprecise requiring a constellation of clinical features to define them
Diagnostic reliability
Diagnostic reliability challenged in 1960s – psychiatrist (Szasz 1960/1) plus classic study Rosenhan (1973)
Several studies showed low diagnostic reliability
The reliability of psychiatric diagnosis was limited by the lack of widely accepted and standardized diagnostic criteria
The DSM (APA) and ICD (WHO) were developed to achieved greater objectivity, diagnostic precision and reliability
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
DSM 1 – 1952, DSM 11 -1968 Symptoms were not specified for specific
disorders Causes were associated with subconscious
conflicts or maladaptive reactions to life problems
Focus was the differentiation of neurosis and psychosis
DSM
DSM 111 (1980) – Focus how to identify psychiatric disorders in clinical practice on the basis of psychopathology
DSM III-R (1987), DSM-IV (1994), DSM-IV-R (2000)
DSM –V (2013)
Structure of DSM-IV
The DSM-IV organizes each psychiatric diagnosis into five levels (axes) – Axis I: clinical disorders, including major
mental disorders, as well as developmental and learning disorders
– – Axis II: underlying pervasive or personality
conditions, as well as mental retardation
Structure of DSM-IV
– Axis III: Acute medical conditions and Physical disorders.
– Axis IV: psychosocial and environmental factors contributing to the disorder
– Axis V: Global assessment of functioning
Structure of DSM-IV
Axis 1 organises mental disorders into 16 major diagnostic classes
For each disorder a specific criteria is set out for making the diagnosis
Structure of DSM-IV
For most disorders symptoms must be sufficient to cause
– “clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning“
DSM- 5
International Classification of Diseases (ICD)
ICD-10 came into use in WHO Member States 1994.
This is the latest in a series which has its origins in the 1850s.
ICD-10
Since the 1990s, the APA and WHO have worked to bring the DSM and the relevant sections of ICD into concordance, but some differences remain
Critique of DSM
Compilation exclusively by US psychiatrists
Continuing debate about validity and reliability
Relationship of DSM authors with drug companies
Critique of DSM
increase in categories driven by financial incentives – capitalise on a best seller
Increased medicalization of normal
behaviour
DSM perpetuating the deficiencies of previous classifications – not working towards a more scientific system
Consclusion
Diagnosis rests on clinician judgement about whether symptoms and impairment of functioning meets diagnostic criteria
Cultural/Class differences in emotional expression and social behaviour can be misinterpreted as impairment
Clinicians must be sensitive to the context and meaning of exhibited symptoms