Diagnosis in the Assessment Process

This weeks reading focused heavily on the DSM-V and how this tool is used in the field of Mental Health. Luckily, from being fresh out of the Psychopathology course from last semester, I am very familiar with the DSM-V. However, I am not, and probably never will be, familiar with diagnosing individuals who come in for treatment. This is mainly because I won't have the knowledge, expertise, or qualification to diagnose clients and, secondly, because I don't want to have that responsibility. I am going to be a School Counselor and, as you know, School Counselors are unable to diagnosis students - although I'm sure there are SC's out there who have diagnoses made up in their minds about certain students who present to them distinct qualities that fit into a disorder in the DSM-V.

Anyways, back to the assessment piece of this chapter. While I believe that assessing patients and clients is completely necessary before actually diagnosing them with a disorder of some sort, I highly hope that these assessments are reliable, valid, and cross-culturally relevant. The chapter touches on the fact that there are some ethnicities who are over- or under-diagnosed in certain circumstances. This scares me because there are lots more ethnicities in our nation than the ones the DSM-V caters to, which is a white American. As the Mental Health field continues to grow and learn, I hope that the instruments we use to assess individuals for mental disorders also continue to grow and develop in a more culturally accepting way.