disability or disorder
TEXT:
Psychopathology : Foundations for a Contemporary Understanding
by James E. Maddux and Barbara A. Winstead
Original Question:
For this week’s Forum, respond to the following: There are clear advantages and criticisms of the current DSM and the process of diagnosis in general. What do you think about the current classification system and its collection of both categorical and dimensional information? What do you see as the biggest challenges in using it for diagnosis?
Reply to the following response with 200 words minimum. (please make response as if having a conversation, respond directly to some of the statements in below post. This is not providing an analysis of the original post. Respectfully address it and even ask clarifying or additional questions.)
There is definitely a division of opinions when people discuss the DSM and its effectiveness. The DSM is meant to determine what disability or disorder someone may have. The problem is, someone may describe symptoms that aren’t entirely truthful and then they are diagnosed with a disorder that doesn’t match their actual issue. Then once diagnosed, they will most likely be prescribed medications, most of which may be useless. There is also the idea that some hold that the DSM is meant to provide a cash flow for pharmaceutical companies.
The problem is that even with having the DSM, many psychiatrists do not pay that much attention to it. There have been many revisions of the DSM where disorders were added, excluded or there was created a different path to diagnose someone with something. A psychiatrist has to pay close attention to the patient, treating them based off of individual symptoms, not so much from a book.
Some may not be aware, but when a child is having emotional or mental struggles in school, the DSM is generally used as a guide to help those children receive special behavioral services as well as special education services while in school. However, with this comes some people who may take advantage of such a property because they may seek to receive disability benefits for their children and pocket the money. I am not saying this is the case in and more instances the diagnosis is true and the families do in fact need financial assistance to provide their children with the proper care that they need. I personally know how expensive it is to have services for my son who is high functioning but my current insurance does not cover all of these services. I do not receive aid from the state or federal aid for that matter.
In my opinion, the DSM is an imperfect guide for trying to predict a treatment that may or may not benefit a patient. Just diagnosing an individual with a mental illness does not point the way for an effective treatment for them. This is part of the reason why some people have more than one diagnosis and may respond poorly to medication. One very important thing to point out is that two people who may suffer from the same genetic predisposition for a mental illness most likely manifest their conditions differently. With all of this being said, I feel as though the DSM is effective is categorizing illnesses, but is ineffective in determining individual needs of treatments.
A question I pose is why do you think people with the same metal illnesses differentiate in their behaviors? What are your views on how easy it is to diagnose and misdiagnose someone based off of the DSM?
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