APT - Defining and Classifying Mental Disorders Lesson
Defining and Classifying Mental Disorders
In this unit you will learn about various psychological disorders. Students often find themselves applying these symptoms to themselves or people they know. Try not to do that!
Someone's behaviors and thought processes are only considered disordered if they meet all three of these criteria:
- distressful to the person exhibiting them
- deviant from what is standard in the person's culture
- dysfunctional to the point of disrupting the person's life
Psychologists use the current version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (in May 2013, they released the fifth edition) to diagnose disorders. Each new edition eliminates, adds, or reclassifies disorders. For example, bulimia was not listed as a disorder in earlier versions of the DSM and there used to be several different types of schizophrenia. The DSM-5 defines and classifies disorders, offering symptoms and descriptions, but it does not offer treatment plans. An appropriate treatment plan is chosen based on the preferences of the psychologist and patient.
Before going into detail about the specific disorders listed in the DSM-5, it is important to note the dangers of labeling anyone with a mental health disorder. A famous study in the 1970's by Stanford Professor David Rosenhan makes some of these dangers clear. A dozen of Rosenhan's assistants went to various psychiatric hospitals, each claiming to hear voices, but exhibiting no other symptoms. They were all admitted and diagnosed with schizophrenia. In the next several days, none of them mentioned hearing voices again, but hospital staff assumed everything they did was because of their schizophrenia problem and forced them to take medication before being discharged.
The importance of labeling was part of the intelligence unit too, centering on the implications of a gifted or an intellectual disability diagnosis. The same can be true in the case of a disorder diagnosis. If someone is diagnosed with a disorder, it can change the way the person thinks about himself and it can change the way others think about him. But treatment plans usually only make sense after a diagnosis, so diagnosis is often necessary.
Watch the video below for an introduction to mental disorders.
IMAGES CREATED BY GAVS OR OPENSOURCE