Changing The Scope … about DSM (5)
Poster A9, Monday, October%208, 11:30%20am%20-%201:00%20pm, Essex%20Ballroom
Marc Calmeyn1, Dorien Nieman2; 1Psychiatrist Psychiatric Centre Olv Bruges, 2Associate Professor Academic Medical Center Department of Psychiatry Amsterdam
Worldwide the DSM is used as a basis for morbidity statistics; reimbursement systems; intervention decision support in health care, education and welfare contexts; design of research; communication and teaching about mental health problems. The Superior Health Council of Belgium advise the Belgian government. It has installed a multidisciplinary expert committee to make a report on the problematic side of the use the DSM (5) in mental health care and possible alternatives. The expert committee consists of psychiatrists, psychologists, philosophers, sociologists and an expert by experience. This evaluation at government level is the first to be presented in the international professional community. The expert committee concludes that there are many epistemological concerns with classification in psychiatry, which are related to debates about their ‘natural kindness’ i.e. it is questionable that there are kinds of mental disorders much in the same way as there are kinds of chemical substances or species of animals. On the clinical level, societal and medical ideas about health and healthcare are changing. Health is not only composed of bio-psychosocial components, but also has an existential dimension: mental health problems challenge people’s self-experience as well as their social position, which is often seriously hampered. The expert report committee describes new developments namely the recovery movement, clinical staging and diagnosis by means of clinical case formulations. All this is an appeal for changing the scope about psychosis, psychiatric classification, its epistemological fundaments and clinical use.
Topic Area: Diagnosis and Phenomenology