Question

What is the Diagnostic and Statistical manual of mental disorder (history) and what is the purpose?

Answer 1

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and offers a common language and standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders. It is used, or relied upon, by clinicians, researchers, psychiatric drug regulation agencies, health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, the legal system, and policy makers together with alternatives such as the ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders, produced by the WHO.

The DSM is now in its fifth edition, the DSM-5, published on May 18, 2013. The DSM evolved from systems for collecting census and psychiatric hospital statistics, and from a United States Army manual. Revisions since its first publication in 1952 have incrementally added to the total number of mental disorders, although also removing those no longer considered to be mental disorders.

The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) is the other commonly used manual for mental disorders and actually the official system for the US. It is distinguished from the DSM in that it covers health as a whole. While the DSM is the most popular diagnostic system for mental disorders in the US, the ICD is used more widely in Europe and other parts of the world. The DSM-IV-TR (4th. ed.) contains specific codes that allows for comparisons between the DSM and the ICD manuals, which may not systematically match because revisions are not simultaneously coordinated. Though recent editions of the DSM and ICD have become similar due to collaborative agreements, each one contains information absent from the other.

While the DSM has been praised for standardizing psychiatric diagnostic categories and criteria, it has also generated controversy and criticism. Critics, including the National Institute of Mental Health, argue that the DSM represents an unscientific and subjective system. There are ongoing issues concerning the validity and reliability of the diagnostic categories; the reliance on superficial symptoms; the use of artificial dividing lines between categories and from "normality"; possible cultural bias; and medicalization of human distress. The publication of the DSM, with tightly guarded copyrights, now makes APA over $5 million a year, historically totaling over $100 million.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is a reference work consulted by psychiatrists, psychologists, physicians in clinical practice, social workers , medical and nursing students, pastoral counselors, and other professionals in health care and social service fields. The book's title is often shortened to DSM , or an abbreviation that also indicates edition, such as DSM-IV-TR, which indicates fourth edition, text revision of the manual, published in 2000. The DSM-IV-TR provides a classification of mental disorders, criteria sets to guide the process of differential diagnosis , and numerical codes for each disorder to facilitate medical record keeping. The stated purpose of the DSM is threefold: to provide "a helpful guide to clinical practice"; "to facilitate research and improve communication among clinicians and researchers"; and to serve as "an educational tool for teaching psychopathology."

Purpose
Many disorders consist of multiple symptoms, and many of the symptoms overlap multiple conditions. The DSM takes the symptoms that exist simultaneously and lists them so that a medical professional can narrow down what disorder a patient might have and rule out the ones that he/she does not have. This makes it possible to recommend an effective treatment, whether it is pharmaceutical or not. In the case of pharmaceuticals, this is sometimes vitally important, as medications that alleviate symptoms within one condition might aggravate symptoms in another.