History of Diagnosis
Diagnosis is the procedure used to identify the presence, nature, and cause of a disorder from its onset, course, and constellation of signs and symptoms (Othmer and Othmer 2002). Mitchell Wilson (1993) has outlined the movement toward medicalization of diagnosis in an article ‘‘DSM-III and the Transformation of American Psychiatry’’. He states that from the end of World War II until the mid- 1970s the organizing model for American psychiatry was a ‘‘broadly conceived psychosocial model, informed by psychoanalytic and sociological thinking’’. The essence of treatment within this model was ‘‘to understand the meaning of the symptom and undo its psychogenic cause rather than manipulate the symptom directly’’. This model which …show more content…
401). After the DSM I came out It did not take long, for problems to start developing around the use of DSM-I so there was a need for DSM-II which attempt to fix the problem around the first one, DSM-II was similar in its dependence on a psychosocial and psychoanalytic orientation. The one thing with the psychosocial model it did not distinguish clearly between the well and the sick and ‘‘if the boundary between normal and abnormal is fluid then psychiatric diagnosis must be arbitrary’’ (Wilson, M. 1993). Diagnosis according to the psychosocial model of the first two DSM’s had little of what researchers refer to as ‘‘reliability’’ and ‘‘it was clear that there was little more than a random chance that two psychiatrists would agree on the diagnosis of a given …show more content…
2009). In the field of social work, many people have different opinion about the use of the DSM; some people have taken this point beyond the dimensional versus categorical debate of diagnosis. Some researchers believe that the use of the DSM is unrelated with the history and focus of the profession (Kirk and Kutchins 1992; Kirk 2005), social workers didn’t start as counselors or as clinicians. There were two national surveys that were done of clinical social workers use of the DSM-III by Kutchins and Kirk in (1988) and the DSM-IV Frazer colleagues in (2009), those surveys found that while the DSM is being commonly used as clinical tool which we must understand as professionals, its primary purpose is for management of insurance reimbursement. In those two experiments only half of the clinicians that use the DSM-IV specified that they would use the reference if it was not required.so both Kirk and Kutchins (1992) have logically came up with a reasonable opinion that “the labeling and medicalization of psychosocial problems directly inhibits the understanding of the individual client” (Kutchins and Kirk in 1988), which is a key feature of clinical social work. Further, they suggest that social workers should think twice before accepting the pairing of the DSM and the insurance billing system
Diagnosis is the procedure used to identify the presence, nature, and cause of a disorder from its onset, course, and constellation of signs and symptoms (Othmer and Othmer 2002). Mitchell Wilson (1993) has outlined the movement toward medicalization of diagnosis in an article ‘‘DSM-III and the Transformation of American Psychiatry’’. He states that from the end of World War II until the mid- 1970s the organizing model for American psychiatry was a ‘‘broadly conceived psychosocial model, informed by psychoanalytic and sociological thinking’’. The essence of treatment within this model was ‘‘to understand the meaning of the symptom and undo its psychogenic cause rather than manipulate the symptom directly’’. This model which …show more content…
401). After the DSM I came out It did not take long, for problems to start developing around the use of DSM-I so there was a need for DSM-II which attempt to fix the problem around the first one, DSM-II was similar in its dependence on a psychosocial and psychoanalytic orientation. The one thing with the psychosocial model it did not distinguish clearly between the well and the sick and ‘‘if the boundary between normal and abnormal is fluid then psychiatric diagnosis must be arbitrary’’ (Wilson, M. 1993). Diagnosis according to the psychosocial model of the first two DSM’s had little of what researchers refer to as ‘‘reliability’’ and ‘‘it was clear that there was little more than a random chance that two psychiatrists would agree on the diagnosis of a given …show more content…
2009). In the field of social work, many people have different opinion about the use of the DSM; some people have taken this point beyond the dimensional versus categorical debate of diagnosis. Some researchers believe that the use of the DSM is unrelated with the history and focus of the profession (Kirk and Kutchins 1992; Kirk 2005), social workers didn’t start as counselors or as clinicians. There were two national surveys that were done of clinical social workers use of the DSM-III by Kutchins and Kirk in (1988) and the DSM-IV Frazer colleagues in (2009), those surveys found that while the DSM is being commonly used as clinical tool which we must understand as professionals, its primary purpose is for management of insurance reimbursement. In those two experiments only half of the clinicians that use the DSM-IV specified that they would use the reference if it was not required.so both Kirk and Kutchins (1992) have logically came up with a reasonable opinion that “the labeling and medicalization of psychosocial problems directly inhibits the understanding of the individual client” (Kutchins and Kirk in 1988), which is a key feature of clinical social work. Further, they suggest that social workers should think twice before accepting the pairing of the DSM and the insurance billing system