Understanding Anxiety DSM IV
During our research to understand what is anxiety, we came across the term "anxiety dsm iv" several times. At first we used to skip it and continue reading. Then when we realized that it keeps appearing we decided to understand what it is all about.
We thought that we should write about our findings since many of the people who are trying to understand what is anxiety must come across this term as well.
First of all the abreviation "DSM" stands for: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. "IV" means that this is the fourth revision. DSM is published by the American Psychiatric Association. It provides diagnostic criteria for mental disorders. This guide is used mainly in the united states and in varying degrees around the world.
People who use such a guide are usualy clinicians, researchers, health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, psychiatric drug regulation agencies and policy makers. T
DSM has initially started as a system for collecting census and psychiatric hospital statistics. It was first developed by the US Army Hospital.
As much as there was controversy and criticism around DSM, it also received praise. The last revision was the DSM IV which was published in 1994. There is a DSM V but it is currently under preparation and is due for publication in 2012. There is talk about an early draft release in 2009.
In addition to DSM there is the mental disorders section of the "International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD). This is another guide that is used more often in some parts of the world.
In Short DSM IV is a manual that covers all mental health disorders for both children and adults. Among the areas that it lists are: known causes of these disorders, statistics in terms of gender, age at onset.
We have mentioned above the people that mostly use this manual or guide. In general menatal health professionals use DSM when working with patients in order to better undersatnd their illness and potential treatment. In addition it helps third party payer such as isurance companies understand the needs of the patients.
Let us now try to have a sneak peak at the structure of DSM. It uses a multidimentional approach in diagnosing an illness. The dimensions it assesses are as follows:
1- Clinical Syndromes: This is what we typically think of as the diagnosis (e.g., depression, schizophrenia, social phobia)
2- Developmental Disorders and Personality Disorders:
a) Developmental Disorders: These include autism and mental retardation, disorders which are typically first evident in childhood.
b) Personality disorders: These are clinical syndromes which have a more long lasting symptoms and encompass the individual’s way of interacting with the world. They include Paranoid, Antisocial, and Borderline Personality Disorders.
3- Physical Conditions: which play a role in the development, continuance, or exacerbation of dimensions 1 and 2: Physical conditions such as brain injury or HIV/AIDS that can result in symptoms of mental illness are included here.
4- Severity of Psychosocial Stressors: Events in a persons life, such as death of a loved one, starting a new job, college, unemployment, and even marriage can impact the disorders listed in dimenstions 1 and 2. These events are both listed and rated for this axis.
5- Highest Level of Functioning: On the final axis, the clinician rates the person’s level of functioning both at the present time and the highest level within the previous year. This helps the clinician understand how the above four dimensions are affecting the person and what type of changes could be expected.
We hope that you find this post useful. We will continually introduce material for you to better understand what is Anxiety. We will continue our research and bring you more information to cover as many aspects as possible of anxiety. Meanwhile you can check the list of materials and tools that we gathered for you to tackle and solve anxiety for yourself and others at:
1- BusinessFountains Store: This is the main area of Anxiety Material that we are collecting.
2- Anxiety Self Help Library: This section mainly includes anxiety related audio books and other audio materials. Audio books are very useful when you don’t have time to read a book. For more audio book listings and categories you can go to our Audio Book Store.
3- What is Anxiety full article list
4- Anxiety Centre: We have decided to create this section since we are creating more and more channels that we want to give you access to which include anxiety information and solution programs. This area includes most of the above items and more. From now on Anxiety Centre will be the place that will include the items that we will ad for you whether it is a totally new channel or an item within a channel.
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May 7th, 2009 at 9:06 am
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May 12th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
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May 12th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
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May 12th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
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May 13th, 2009 at 5:07 am
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June 11th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Good post. I think it is possible to recover from depression, but it takes time and patience. I can’t find any good message boards on the net, can you recommend any?
June 11th, 2009 at 11:04 am
Thank you very much for your comment. I am afraid I am not much into message boards.