Essay on Uncovering Human Behavior: Exploring Psychology for Answers

Introduction

Psychology is one particular branch of knowledge that mainly focusses on the mind and how it changes under different circumstances. In this case, psychology is an important branch of knowledge that can be used to understand human behavior in different situations. The reason for the development of this branch of knowledge is because human beings tend to change behavior, and thus, there was the need to understand why it changes and the factors that may be playing a role. In most cases, many people tend to exhibit abnormal behavior that is different from the usual one, and this issue has led to the development of a branch of psychology called abnormal psychology (Mazurek et al., 2017). Abnormal behavior can be experienced in various places such as the workplace, thus reducing the productivity rate of an individual. Abnormal behavior may be understood as the onset of a certain mental disorder. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is one of the main tools that is mostly used to diagnose these mental disorders. Therefore, this paper will discuss the DSM-5, its evaluation, as well as the aspects that surround its use to examine the patients.

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Changes Made From DSM -IV to DSM - 5

Several editions of the DSM have been developed over the years with notable changes from one edition to another. As the DSM transitioned from the fourth (IV) edition to the fifth, certain changes were made. One of the changes was relating to diagnosing mental disorders due to a general medical condition (North, Hong & Downs, 2018). In this case, mental disorders would not be diagnoses based on an underlying medical condition that an individual might be having.

The second change was the idea that disorders were first diagnosed during infancy, childhood, or adolescence. This issue was dropped in the sense that a person can be diagnosed with a disorder at any point in life (North, Hong & Downs, 2018). The third change was disorder reclassification. In both the DSM - IV and DSM - 5, classes are used to classify disorders. However, in DSM - 5, six classes were added, while four were dropped (North, Hong & Downs, 2018).

The Role of the DSM - 5

The DSM-5 tool is important in making a diagnosis of a mental condition. According to, Tolentino & Schmidt (2018), one of the main role that the DSM - 5 performs is that it is used to identify the mental condition that a person has. Secondly, the DSM - 5 provides proper guidance to the physicians on the modes of treatment that the physician can use when treating a patient with a mental disorder (Tolentino & Schmidt, 2018). Moreover, the DSM-5 is used to dictate the payment that the patient diagnosed with a mental disorder will have to pay to the health care providers.

Questions to Ask in a Clinical Interview

When providing a clinical interview, there are certain questions that the physician should ask the client. One of the questions to ask a client during a clinical interview is medical histories. A medical officer must ask the client the medical history to understand whether the current condition is related to the previous ones, thus provide accurate treatment (Tolentino & Schmidt, 2018).

The second question to ask the client is to ask what allergies he or she could be having. This question will help the medical practitioner to understand the medications to provide to prevent any allergic reactions from occurring (Tolentino & Schmidt, 2018). The other question to ask the client is the family history of medical conditions. This question will help the health care personnel to understand if the present condition is due to genetics which means it could have been passed on from the parents. .

Making and Accurate Diagnosis U2sing DSM - 5

As a counselor, it is important to use the DSM - 5 correctly to properly diagnose a patient and provide the right course of action because it is said that the first step to treating a disease is to properly diagnose it (Tolentino & Schmidt, 2018). The DSM -5 contains different types of diagnostic information, such as the symptoms of various diseases as well as other criteria (Tolentino & Schmidt, 2018).

Therefore, when the counselor is using the DSM - 5 to treat a patient, he or she will be expected to alight the symptoms with the criteria that have been provided by the DSM - 5. If the symptoms match what has been described in the DSM -5 criteria, the patient will be diagnosed with a particular disorder. After, that appropriate treatment options, as defined by the DSM-5 criteria, will be used.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, it is evident that the DSM - 5 criteria is one of the important tools that are used in psychology to help in the diagnosis of a mental disorder. There have been several changes that were undertaken to make sure that the DSM 5 effective as it was being revised from DSM - IV. These changes involve dropping some of the components that were not necessary, thus making the DSM cumbersome to use. The DSM - 5 has been widely used because it contains the required criteria that are required to diagnose various mental diseases as well as provide the direction to be followed to treat the conditions effectively. Therefore, it is required that the counselors should understand the DSM - 5 well and use it to diagnose various conditions accurately so that proper treatment can be prescribed to the patients.

References

Mazurek, M. O., Lu, F., Symecko, H., Butter, E., Bing, N. M., Hundley, R. J., & Handen, B. L. (2017). A prospective study of the concordance of DSM-IV and DSM-5 diagnosticcriteria for autism spectrum disorder. Journal of autism and developmentaldisorders, 47(9), 2783-2794. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-017-3200-7

North, C. S., Hong, B. A., & Downs, D. L. (2018). PTSD: A systematic approach to diagnosisand treatment: Accurate diagnosis and management depend on the proper application ofDSM-5 criteria. Current Psychiatry, 17(4), 35-44.https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA539324403&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&ISSN=15378276&p=HRCA&sw=w

Tolentino, J. C., & Schmidt, S. L. (2018). DSM-5 criteria and depression severity: implicationsfor clinical practice. Frontiers in psychiatry, 9, 450.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00450/full