DSM IV-TR

DSM IV-TR

Introduction

The term mental illness refers to any disease of the mind that affects a person's thoughts or behavior. Mental illnesses can have various causes, not all of which are understood by scientists. Some may be caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, while others may result from environmental factors such as severe stress. Most observers of mental-health policy in the U.S. agree that deinstitutionalization the policy of releasing patients from government-run psychiatric hospitals that was begun in the 1960s has failed. Most even agree on why the policy has failed. Regardless of the reason, community mental-health services, which were expected to treat released patients, simply have not been able to meet the needs of the mentally ill.

A large part of the controversy over diverse forms of mental attention stems from the methods used to diagnose the disorders. There is no accepted diagnostic test for diverse mental disorder categorized into mental illness. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) unveiled a number of proposed revisions to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), used as the primary reference resource for psychiatric diagnoses. The DSM influenced how people were diagnosed for psychiatric disorders, what sorts of medications they were prescribed and whether insurance companies paid for their care. The proposals were subject to a public comment period ending April 20, and the final version of the new manual was likely to be published by May 2013.

DSM as a Tool for the Practitioners of Mental Health Field

DSM is a manual used by most mental health professionals that classifies diverse mental disorders. Prior to the DSM-IV, "psychiatrists couldn't seem to agree on who was sick and what ailed them," writes Alix Spiegel in the New Yorker. "A patient identified as a textbook hysteric by one psychiatrist might easily be defined as a hypochondriac depressive by another" (Corrigan, 2007). The DSM-IV, however, codified a set of criteria for diagnosing more than 300 mental illnesses. In order to be diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, for example, a patient must display four out of the eight listed traits, which include "a miserly spending style toward both self and others" and a preoccupation with "details, rules, lists, order, organization or schedules to the extent that the major point of the activity is lost" (Wahl, 1995).

The DSM-IV is the single most significant reference book in modern psychiatry, experts assert. Indeed, insurance companies often will not reimburse a patient for mental health-related expenses unless they have received a DSM diagnosis (Wahl, 1995). The DSM-IV also created ways of diagnosing numerous mental illnesses that had previously been dismissed, including attention-deficit disorder (ADD), autism, bulimia and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But the most important contribution of the DSM-IV, experts say, was the way it standardized criteria for diagnosing mental illnesses, thus eliminating the irregularities that had plagued the profession of psychiatry (Wahl, 1995).

Much criticism has also focused on the DSM. For example, some critics argue that the DSM's criteria for diagnosing mental illness are often far too ...