Module Five
Reading Four – The Diagnostic Piece
Review the Kaufman material on the DSM-IV if that is your text. If it is not, please do a quick literature review by pulling up and browsing at least four articles about the DSM-IV classification system.
You are just learning how to use the process and it is actually quite an advanced way of looking at behaviors and emotional states and moods. It has a long history and a quick review of those steps and how we developed the current paradigm is outlined below.
Explaining Abnormal Behavior
From http://home.epix.net/~tcannon1/diagnosis.html
Medical Model
- Specific causes, symptoms, disease
- Abnormal behavior is biogenic
- Results from malfunction within the body
Psychodynamic Perspective
- Unconscious psychological conflicts originating in childhood
- Behavioral Perspective
- Inappropriate learning
- Maladaptive behaviors are rewarded
- Adaptive behaviors are not rewarded
Cognitive Perspective
- Maladaptive ways of perceiving or thinking about oneself or the environment
- Sociocultural Perspective
- Broad social forces
- Examines the biases that can influence diagnosis
Brief History of Diagnosis
- “The Classification of Psychopathology Has a Long Past but Recent History”
- Use very old, detailed descriptions of patients, we make a dx today
Kraepelin-1898: 2 Varieties of Psychopathology
- Dementia praecox (schizophrenia) and affective disorders
- Emphasized the biological bases of psychiatric disorders
1917-APiA With Census Bureau
- Developed classification of mental disease
- Uniform statistics in hospitals
- Not useful for diagnosis
APiA and NY Medical Center
- Developed new nomenclature
- Mostly for chronic inpatients
- Not useful to WWII vets, who had psychophysiological, personality, and acute disorders
Armed Forces and VA developed their own system
1948 - World Health Organization
Added section on mental disorders to the international classification of diseases and health related problems (ICD)
Excluded dementia, adjustment disorders, and many personality disorders
In 1948 There Were 3 Different Systems Being Used in the USA:
1) APiA and NY Medical Center
2) Armed Forces and VA
3) ICD
As late as 1970, France and Russia had their own classification systems
History of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
DSM-I
- Published in 1952
- Little influence on dx practice but started process of thinking about disorders as a
group of symptoms
DSM-II in 1968
- Relied heavily on unproven theories of etiology
- Not widely accepted
- System had very little reliability
DSM-III
- 1980, directed by Spitzer
- 3 Major Changes in DSM-III:
- Took atheoretical approach to dx
- Specificity and detail of criteria-could study reliability and validity
- Created axes
Axes
- Axis I: disorder itself
- Axis II: chronic, personality disorders
- Axis III: physical disorders and conditions
- Axis IV: psychosocial stress
- Axis V: current level of adaptive functioning
DSM-III-R
- 1987
- Minor adjustments to some criteria
- Problems With DSM-IIIs
- Low reliability of some dx categories remained
- Many criteria
- Empirically based and potentially measurable
- Were derived by committee consensus
DSM-IV
- Realized need for consistent, worldwide system
- Out in 1993 concurrently worked on with DSM
- Task force of experts created for DSM-iv-reviewed literature
- Independent Studies or Field Trials
- Examined reliability and validity of alternative sets of definitions or criteria
- Created new diagnoses, if needed
Changes From DSM-IIIR
- Organically-based vs. Psychologically-based disorders
- Only personality and MR coded on axis II
- Axis IV psychosocial and environmental problems
- Axis V with estimate of highest level of functioning in the past year
DSM-IV-TR
- Corrected factual errrors identified in DSM-IV
- Ensured up-to-date information
- Added new information
- Enhanced educational value of test
- Updated ICD-9-CM codes
CRITICISMS OF DSM-IV
(see Carson article)
1) Problem With Multiple dxs:
- Not same as “disease”
- No markers
- No definitive criteria, etc.
2) Disorders Are Interactions of Multiple Factors:
- Biological
- Psychosocial
- sociocultural
- Historic/current
- Hardware and software
- Bad luck
3) Excessive Focus on Reliability
- Usefulness?
- Predictiveness?
- Construct validity?
Other DSM Issues Raised by Carson
- DSM-II to DSM-III, 50% of pp. Previously dx’d as schizophrenic moved to other categories
- Poor predictive validity for schizophrenia just 6-25 months in the future
- Changes in dx criteria may render past research unusable
Carson Recommends
- Prototypal-dimensional-profile (hybrid) approach
Disadvantages of DX:
- Misdiagnosis
- Assumption of discontinuity
- Embodiment of medical model
- Questionable reliability
- Labeling
- Illusion of explanation (“he is hallucinating because he is schizophrenic”)
Benefits of DX:
- Communication
- Etiology
- Treatment
- Prognosis
From http://home.epix.net/~tcannon1/diagnosis.html
Sample criticisms of the DSM-IV
* Acton, G. S. and Jason J. Zodda, Rochester Institute of Technology Classification of Psychopathology: Goals and Methods in an Empirical Approach. Many have criticized the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994), and few regard it as a vehicle of truth, yet its most serious limitation is that its frank operationism in defining manifest categories has distracted attention from theories about what is going on at the latent level. We sketch a Generalized Interpersonal Theory of Personality and Psychopathology and apply it to interpersonal aspects of depression to illustrate how structural individual differences combine with functional dynamic processes to cause interpersonal behavior and affect. Such a causal account relies on a realist ontology in which manifest diagnoses are only a means to learning about the latent distribution, whether categorical or dimensional. Comorbidity of DSM diagnoses suggests that dimensionality will be the rule, not the exception, with internalization and externalization describing common diagnoses.
* This article criticizes the approach to language underlying the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Concepts from the philosophy of language illuminate taxonomic problems that vex users of the DSM nosology: lack of coverage, comorbidity, and within-category heterogeneity. Exception is taken to the operationism that results in a highly artificial DSM nomenclature, raising the specter of non-referential criterion sets. A dimensional approach is recommended because it would better correspond to an objectively seamless reality.
Now that you have a sense of the history and a couple of the issues, it is time to try your own hand at using the tool. Go to activity four and give it a whirl.
GO to Activity Four