Pros and Cons of Diagnostic Categories for Mental Disorders: DSM Practical and Ethical Issues

ESSAY

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Discussing the pros and cons for using diagnostic categories for mental disorders. Including
practical and ethical issues associated with its use..........................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

Discussing the pros and cons for using diagnostic categories for mental
disorders. Including practical and ethical issues associated with its use.
The diagnostic and Statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM) refers to the handbook
that has been utilized by the healthcare professionals for getting guidance in regard to the
diagnosis of mental disorders. DSM mainly contains the description and the major symptoms for
diagnosing mental disorders Shorter, (2022) Example categories of DSM includes, Anxiety
disorders, depressive disorders, eating disorders, personality disorders, bipolar and the related
disorders. Thus, DSM enables healthcare specialist to have effective knowledge in context of
adopting and performing practice that assures the treatment of mental disorders.
The major advantages of using diagnostic categories such as DSM are associated with the
Standardization, Research guidance and Therapeutic guidance. Despite the flaws of DSM, it
is helpful for numerous reasons. Apart from the billing and coding the standardization assures
numerous benefits to the client and the clinician. The standardization of the diagnosis helps in
ensuring that, patient is receiving the appropriate and quality treatment. Furthermore, it ensures
help to the therapist in context of developing the specific therapy or goals. Moreover, it increases
the effectiveness of treatment. In addition, it has been reviewed that DSM provides help in
guiding the research in the context of mental health. The checklist of diagnosis helps in ensuring
that the different groups of the analyst are studying about the same disorder. Along with this,
DSM Reduces the guesswork for the mental health professionals. DSM diagnostic provides the
complete map in term of providing therapy to the patient who are facing mental issues. Within
using the DSM criteria the therapist can easily develop the quick frame of the reference that
assures help during the client session. Thus, DSM guides the research and the treatment as well.
Also, it provides the standardization framework in order to perform the practices McCoy Jr,
Pellegrini, (2020)
In mental health diagnostic using DSM incentivize to bring standardization in the
practice. Diagnostic and statistical Manual is an assistive manner to categorize the mental health
related issues. It has been seen that the toughest branch of illness is mental realm and over the
time due to improper standardization the discrepancy issue was a hindering way to categorize it
appropriately DSM is very advanced and clinical with respect to categorization of mental health
diagnostic, it contains descriptions, criteria, symptoms etc. into consideration, further it provides