306 Diagnosis of Mental Disorders
The diagnosis of a mental disorder is a process that begins with a qualified licensed practitioner. Mental disorders are unique medical conditions because there are no laboratory tests that can be administered in order to help the clinician make an accurate diagnosis. This complicates the process and allows for more erroneous diagnosis than other types of medical conditions. To help clinicians avoid such errors, classification systems have been developed utilizing common nomenclature. Such nomenclature enables clinicians to effectively communicate with one another in a specific manner, resulting in better overall treatment of a patient. The two most widely used psychiatric classification systems are the International Classification of Disease System (ICD)and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). In the United States, the DSM is used as the standard diagnostic tool.
International Classification of Disease System (ICD)
The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) is published by the World Health Organization(WHO) and used worldwide for morbidityand mortality statistics, reimbursement systems, and automated decision support in medicine. This system is designed to promote international comparability in the collection, processing, classification, and presentation of these statistics. The ICD is a core classification of the WHO Family of International Classifications.
Links:
Link to ICD-10
Link to World Health Organization website
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
Published by the America Psychiatric Association (APA)
History
The American Medico-Psychological Association (which is now called the American Psychological Association) first attempted to publish a manual containing common nomenclature in 1918 called Statistical Manual for Use of Institutions for the Insane, however, it failed because it was poorly constructed. Another edition was published in 1928, but again failed, this time because it was too narrowly focused. In 1948, WHO issued the ICD-6 and was moderately successful in European countries. Finally in 1952 the APA published it’s first manual successfully and have continued revising ever since.
DSM-I: The first edition of the DSM was published in 1952 by the American Psychological Association (APA). This first edition was based off of the previously published ICD-6 and an independent nomenclature system developed at the beginning of WWII by the military. While the DSM-I gained acceptance in the United States and Europe, it was still criticized for not being based off scientific measures and other inadequacies.
DSM-II: In 1968 the DSM-II was published following the publication of the ICD-8 but before the publication of its companion glossary. The DSM-II faced the same types of critiques over reliability and validity as the DSM-I and was culturally biased.
DSM-III: In 1980 the DSM-III was published and included major changes. This edition used a mul