What is a disadvantage of having a classification system for mental disorders?

Inhaltsverzeichnis Show

Drawbacks and Benefits to Diagnosing Psychological Disorders
Psychology Paper
Attention Deficit Disorder
Rage Disorder
Problems with the Diagnosic and Statistical Manual
Short Answer Questions on Assessments and Treatments of Mental Disorders
Categorical Approach to Diagnosis
DSM-IV Case Study
Somatoform Disorder Analysis
The social construction of abnormality
What are the disadvantages of classification of mental disorders?
What are some of the issues with classifying mental disorders?
What is a limitation of classification systems?
Is it useful to have a classification system of mental disorder?

Drawbacks and Benefits to Diagnosing Psychological Disorders
From schizophrenia to bipolar disorder to severe depression there is no question that these are serious mental illnesses that are debilitating and require constant medical care and according to the American Psychiatric Association(APA) hording and internet disorders are just a couple of new diagnosis that they have added to the manual of mental disorder or DSM. But is this addition of new mental disorders really beneficial for the patients or is this a way for doctors and pharmaceutical companies to cash in? , this paper proposes both drawbacks and benefits to the diagnosis of mental disorders as well as investigation of some specific examples of diagnosed disorders. However, the paper’s main direction is to focus on the drawbacks which outweigh the benefits arising from categorizing mental illnesses into small segments.
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Psychology Paper
Labels for the sake of professional classification have proven to be invaluable tools. They help psychologists describe psychological disorders, find initial causes for disorders, help outline possible future complications, and in turn aid in the development of beneficial patient treatment. Without being able to label these disorders, then the studies and treatments involved would be confused and disorganized. However, labels do have significant negative effects that can greatly hinder the outlook and opinions held by professionals, patients, and the general public. One must be aware of both positive and negative effects in order to use labeling and treat those who have been labeled in a way which will not shadow one’s thoughts and actions. Keeping this in mind, one must view labels as a way to describe the disorder, but not the person.
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Attention Deficit Disorder
Eysenck, H.J. & Wakefield, J.A. & Friedman, A.F. (1983). Diagnosis and Clinical Assessment: The DSM-IV. Annual Review of Psychology, 34 167-193.
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Rage Disorder
In the following paper, an assessment shall be made of how biology/neurobiology has impacted the study and diagnosis of mental illness. Two general conclusions will be drawn from this presentation. The first of these conclusions is that with time, money, and increased research, there will be an ever-expanding ability to discern biological and material identifiers of mental illness. The second conclusion that shall be drawn is that there will be a continued trend towards "blurring" the border between "normal" and "abnormal" behavior as mental illness is increasingly better understood. Each of these conclusions raises new issues that shall be addressed in the body...
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Problems with the Diagnosic and Statistical Manual
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of mental disorders is a widely used and popular text that lists and describes the various mental disorders and the criteria that resembles each one specifically. These series of manuals have had several major problems since their introduction and the latest edition which has yet to release still faces problems in terms of validity with the scientific community. By use of a diagnostic criterion they fail to incorporate many factors such as social influences, a scientific base, and distinction between the criteria for the different disorders. These are only a few of the problems facing the DSM but they may also be the most significant.
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Short Answer Questions on Assessments and Treatments of Mental Disorders
1. A classification system such as the DSM-5 is judged by its reliability and validity. Define and discuss both reliability and validity and why they are important criteria for DSM-5. (312) When answering the question we first need to understand what reliability and validity means and why it is important to include them in the criteria to judge DSM-5.
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Categorical Approach to Diagnosis
`In the past, I worked in such a research setting, where if a person was found to meet criteria for opiate dependence they received treatment, however if even slightly short of DSM-IV criteria for the disorder they would have to look elsewhere. This was a continual concern for me, as the person who met criteria was not always the person with the most distress, and alternative treatments were not easy for people to find. Largely from this experience, I find the current categorical approach to classifying persons with psychopathology to be an imperfect system at best, with the primary advantage of being convenience when communicating with other professionals. I question whether this convenience comes at a severe cost to accuracy, the result of which is an artificial limit to the range of presentations that occur in psychopathology. As the example above illustrates, the particular aspect that I find most problematic is the use of cutoffs for specific symptoms, for instance the length symptoms must have been present for it to be classified as a disorder, or even the number of symptoms that need to be present. I think it is unlikely that a person who “almost” meets criteria for a disorder would be significantly different from a person with similar symptoms who just barely meets criteria. In private practice these two cases would likely be treated similarly, but in a setting where diagnosis serves as a screening tool the client who met criteria may get treatment while the other does not. In this case I feel that less specific guidelines, lacking specific numerical limits would alleviate many of the problems.
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DSM-IV Case Study
Psychologists use classification systems to diagnose mental disorders. But these systems have also come under criticism. The most popular classification system is the DSM-IV. The DSM-IV focuses mostly on describing symptoms and the statistics of each illness and whom it affects. This manual includes about 250 mental disorders and includes five dimensions, which takes on a multiaxial approach to categorizing various disorders. This method allows psychiatrists to conduct a more thorough and comprehensive evaluation of the client’s functioning, due to mental illness effect on various areas of life. The use of the DSM-IV manual helps make diagnosing mental health disorders among healthcare professionals maintain consistency along with treating
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Somatoform Disorder Analysis
The DSM-V plays a huge role in the classification and treatment of somatoform disorders. It was not until this model that somatoform was not just one category, but had multiple sub-categories under it. With all of this being said, the DSM-V has gotten multiple hits of hard criticism that the new edition has a lack of scientific evidence for specific classifications, and unclear boundaries between every day stressors, and a classified “illness.” However, with constant progress, new information, new disorders and treatments, the DSM, no matter what version, will always take criticism for one thing or another (McCarron, 2013).
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The social construction of abnormality
... scientific field of studying mental illness, it is required by the standards of empirically based studies regarding research in psychology that diagnoses, according to the DSM, must be used in evaluating the efficacy of interventions for specific diseases. Unfortunately, this is another developmental road block to viewing mental health from the correct ontological perspective that need be further developed to accept practitioners of the mental health field as legitimate professionals of mental well-being. Therefore, I maintain that psychiatry and psychology as a field of scientific discovery of the psyche cannot be related to the standard model that is championed in hard sciences. In addition, the concept of abnormality may be socially constructed and, at this point, may serve as some form of social control, but this field of inquiry is not done evolving yet.
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What are the disadvantages of classification of mental disorders?

Drawbacks for diagnosis. Different diagnoses from different psychologists can confuse the patient. A stigma is attached to mental health diagnosis that turns a person into an abnormal human being. Sometimes, elders may over-identify with the illness that reinforces the problem.

What are some of the issues with classifying mental disorders?

We identify four key issues that present challenges to understanding and classifying mental disorder: etiology, including the multiple causality of mental disorder; whether the relevant phenomena are discrete categories or dimensions; thresholds, which set the boundaries between disorder and nondisorder; and ...

What is a limitation of classification systems?

Because a classification system may not adequately explain how a company generates its revenues, it could cause investors to unwittingly reduce overall portfolio diversification by choosing assets that are highly correlated to other portfolio holdings.

Is it useful to have a classification system of mental disorder?

A classification system is integral to that function by determining the threshold for disorder(s). A classification system of mental disorders is also successful to the degree that it serves as a general guide for the treatment and management of people with mental health conditions.