The use of DSM-IV?

Question

What are some of the controversial issues that the use of DSM-IV by medical and legal professionals raises? And how does it influence socialization norms and expectations, social perceptions, individual attitudes and behavior?

Answer 1

Mental health professionals need to label their patients with a diagnosis in order for insurance to pay them. They know there is such a thing as normal or at least "the broad range of normal", but they can't call their patients normal if they want to be paid.

The issue of perceptions by society and individuals has very little to do with the DSM. It's true that someone will use the DSM criteria to try to diagnose some celebrity or politician at a distance, but they would do that anyway without these specific criteria. The criteria were developed to standardize what mental health professionals were talking about when they used various labels. They didn't create those labels.

Criteria for the major psychiatric disorders underestimates the amount of psychopathology in the population. Whenever geneticists are able to identify however many genes predispose someone to bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, they're bound to find that those genetic traits are much more common in the population than just those people who get into trouble with those traits. I don't know if that will make those conditions more normal or marginalize even more people. I do think that the oneupsmanship and fear involved would be just as bad without the DSM.

Answer 2

According to John Horgan in his book "The undiscovered mind" ( I think it was published by Simon and Shuster) the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals have made it so just about anybody can be diagnosed as mentally Ill; this is a socialization norm that influences social perceptions nationwide. As an outpatient who has been diagnosed as mentally ill and has tried earnestly to recover I have found psychiatrists and psychologists have no definition of what it is to be "Normal". Many refuse to answer when asked the simple question, "What is normal?"

My attitude as a result of repeated encounters with the mental health people in the above vein was at first discouragement (how can you change for the better when their is no criteria about what better is?) then depression. My later attitude was to regard my personality before I had had any symptoms and was diagnosed ill, as normal for me. This helped me recover along with medication and talk therapy.

Answer 3

Dude, you are supposed to do your homework/paper on your own....not ask us on here ;)

Good Luck!