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Psychopathology: A Case Study

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`In the past, I worked in such a research setting, where if a person was found to meet criteria for opiate dependence they received treatment, however if even slightly short of DSM-IV criteria for the disorder they would have to look elsewhere. This was a continual concern for me, as the person who met criteria was not always the person with the most distress, and alternative treatments were not easy for people to find. Largely from this experience, I find the current categorical approach to classifying persons with psychopathology to be an imperfect system at best, with the primary advantage of being convenience when communicating with other professionals. I question whether this convenience comes at a severe cost to accuracy, the …show more content…

The second part of the problem is when multiple disorders that are currently considered separate and very similar. Having people with seemingly very different patterns be classified as having the same disorder was something I also saw frequently at my work. In the case of substance dependance we would have some patients who felt they could quit a substance if not for withdrawal, and other who felt the substance controlled their life. To me these seem like different problems, and I wouldn't think of treating them in the same way. I feel the same way about persons entering treatment for major depression that began with a specific event but lasting unreasonably long compared to a person who didn't have a clear event that started the episode. For the first example it could be a lack of coping strategies, yet for the other it may be cognitive distortions, yet both would be listed as the same disorder. As I previously stated, the opposite also seems problematic. Using the previous example, the cognitive distortions resulting in a major depressive episode could also result in dysthymia. Biological theories of disorders also don't seem to support these separations, with similar neuro-chemical problems being associated with ranges of disorders. Together, these two issues call into question the accuracy in our current system of categorical diagnosis in finding discrete clusters of symptoms. Overall, this range of problems with the current system

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