Diagnosing Dysfunctional Behaviour - Evaluation (3)

DSM vs ICD: The ICD adopts a reductionist approach with criteria-based diagnosis. The DSM is more holistic because it takes into account several factors (including social/environmental problems) before making a diagnosis. Most clinicians would use the two diagnostic tools together. Both systems have a western bias, so aren’t always suitable for use in other cultures.

Advantages for Categories of Mental Health: Improves reliability of diagnosis between clinicians. Enables people to obtain a formal diagnosis so that help and support can be obtained. Is regularly monitored and reviewed and updated giving a forum for psychiatrists to come together to discuss and share new issues or problems as they arise. 

Disadvantages for Categories of Mental Health:
Ethnocentric - Based on the American model of abnormality.Based on the medical model of health which assumes there is a method of reliably and consistently measuring mental health – some people dispute this is possible.There is a wide range of individual differences in mental health which has led to more and more categories making the system more and more complex to use.An example of this is that the category ‘personality disorder unknown’ is one of the most commonly used. Does still not avoid bias by the clinician in the interpretation of the symptoms presented.Has not led to reliable diagnosis as research shows that different doctors will still use different categories and different drugs to treat the same patients.