Читать книгу Abnormal Psychology - William J. Ray - Страница 180

Classification is a way to name, organize, and categorize the diversity of symptoms seen in mental disorders. Blashfield and Draguns (1976; see also Blashfield, Flanagan, & Raley, 2010) suggest five different purposes of classification:

1 As a nomenclature—The purpose here, in giving a name to a disorder, is to present a way for mental health professionals to describe and discuss the clients they see.

2 As a basis of information retrieval—Classifying disorders allows for individuals who may not be professionals to search for information concerning mental disorders.

3 As a descriptive system—The name of the disorder summarizes the behaviors, thoughts, and emotions of individuals with the disorder.

4 As a predictive system—In this case, the classification allows one to know the course of the disorder if untreated and particular treatments that may be effective.

5 As a basis for a theory of psychopathology—The focus in this case is to use classification to understand the disorder.

classification: in psychopathology, a way to name, organize, and categorize the collections of symptoms seen in mental disorders

Over the past 200 years, numerous systems have been developed concerning the diagnosis and classification of mental disorders. In the past 50 years, the emphasis has been on reliability of diagnosis such that mental health professionals in one location would diagnose the same individual in the same manner as professionals in another location. As part of this emphasis, there has been a push for observable characteristics that would define a specific disorder. These types of criteria make up the structure of the DSM and the ICD. In general, the criteria used in the DSM and ICD are signs and symptoms that are delineated through observation of, and conversation with, the individual. Since ICD codes are used by many health facilities in the United States, I will note the similarities and differences in ICD and DSM criteria of mental disorders throughout this book.