Psychiatric Diagnosis

Psychiatric diagnosis plays a central role in the clinical practice of modern psychiatry. This "how-to" book provides a description of how to go about making an accurate, comprehensive, yet focused psychiatric diagnosis, while also providing a succinct and critical review of DSM-III-R. This book is written for students and clinicians in the fields of medicine, psychiatry, psychology, social work, nursing, and other fields where professional skills are required to develop psychiatric diagnoses. Chapter 1 describes a biopsychosocial approach to psychiatric assessment, focusing on five elements that result in an integrated assessment process. Chapter 2 focuses on the empirical data base. The empirical data base must be tailored to the clinical context. This chapter provides guidelines for building a psychiatric evaluation. Chapter 3 provides a conceptual overview of DSM-III-R, followed by a capsule summary of the major diagnostic categories in DSM-III-R itself. The application of psychiatric theory is examined in Chapter 4.
This chapter makes the application of theory explicit, rather than implicit, so that a clinician is more aware of the application of theory, its possible benefits, and the introduction of possible biases. Chapter 5 describes the case formulation and provides examples of how the case formulation may be tailored to the individual patient or situation. Finally, Chapter 6 focuses on the fifth component in the psychiatric diagnostic process - the ongoing diagnostic synthesis. This component maintains that the diagnostic process continues indefinitely, or until the patient is no longer under the clinician's care. In this chapter, the author provides guidelines for continuing the diagnostic evaluation process during treatment of the patient. "Psychiatric Diagnosis: A Biopsychosocial Approach using DSM-III-R" demonstrates, in a concise framework, an integrated approach to using DSM-III-R in making accurate diagnoses.