By embracing reliability of definitional criteria, the DSM has become overreliant on using simple checklists to diagnose people
The DSM has to prioritize reliability when defining mental disorders to prevent disagreement, which sacrifices validity, so the DSM has to stay simple, but psychiatry does not. DSM diagnosis should be seen as just one small part of an overall evaluation that would also comprehensively account for the more complicated and individual aspects of each patient. Unfortunately, the DSM approach has been far too influential—dominating the field in a way that was never originally intended. Nuanced psychiatry has become checklist psychiatry, homogenizing individual differences and custom-tailored treatments. Psychiatry, once too idiosyncratic and chaotic, has become too standardized and simpleminded. Training programs focus excessive attention on teaching diagnosis and not enough on understanding everything else about the patient. People forget the wisdom of Hippocrates: “It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.” Of course, best practice is to pay close attention to both. DSM diagnosis has a necessary place in every evaluation, but it never tells the whole story.
References
- Frances, Allen. (2013). Saving Normal CHAPTER 1. What’s Normal and What’s Not? (p. 47). New York, NY: HarperCollins.
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Type:🔴 Tags: Psychiatry Status:☀️