Mental Disorders: A Diagnostic Analysis

Implications The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has been in existence for nearly sixty years, and began with the need to track statistical information of those classified as having a mental health disorder (Sartorius, et al., 1993). Since this time, the DSM has been revised multiple times in an attempt to have a commonality of mental disorders among differing clinicians around the world. This commonality has been met with a great deal of criticism and has been enveloped with controversy, particularly the current new release of the DSM V. For clinicians, the DSM is used as a diagnostic criterion tool that guides a diagnosis of mental disorder, and with each revision; a new learning curve must be advanced. However,

Throughout each revision, the DSM faced challenges by the professional community in reference to nomenclature, scientific developments, lack of specific definitions, inconsistencies, and finally, with the need for empirical foundations of criteria in the DSM IV (American Psychiatric Association, 2015). These issues lead to the twelve-year compilation of the DSM V in 2013. Before the release of this manual, the group in charge of the mechanics of the manual requested input from the professional community of practitioners from around the world, which lead to a great deal of peer experience and knowledge. However, the selection and choices determined by the group of what information was applied and not applied, has drastically changed the manual in multiple

Many have questioned the empirical basis for disorders such as gender dysphoria (Lev, 2013), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) (Greenberg, Brooks, & Dunn, 2015), personality disorders (Skodol, 2011), learning disabilities (Scanlon, 2013), and many other disorders. The majority of the concern comes with the ambiguity of the methodology used in defining these disorders. The DSM V uses a blended dimensional and categorical approach. According to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), this approach was used in order to facilitate a cohesive diagnosis of individuals from mild to severe across differing clinical practices (2015). However, many practitioners argue combing a dimensional approach with a categorical approach has given way to a broad, unadulterated, overly generalized diagnosis of specific mental disorders. As Francis and Jones write in reference to using the DSM V criteria, “makes this worse by relabeling as mental disorder the sadness of grief, the temper tantrums of children, the normal forgetfulness of old age, the everyday distractibility of adult life, the worries of the medically ill, and the temptations of binge eating” (Frances & Jones, 2014). This opinion is reiterated with research, in regards to the empirical basis of categorization used in psychology for more than sixty years. Researchers have done little in the