Psychological Disorders 549cal disorders has been the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), first
published in 1952. The DSM has been revised multiple times as our knowledge and ways
of thinking about psychological disorders have changed. The most recent version, which
was released in 2013, is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition
(DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013). It also includes changes in organization of
disorders, modifications in terminology used to describe disorders and their symptoms, and
discusses the possibility of dimensional assessments for some disorders in future versions
of the manual. The DSM has been useful in providing clinicians with descriptions and crite-
ria for diagnosing mental disorders, but it has not been without its share of controversy, as
the video Diagnosing and Classifying Disorders: The DSM-5 explains.
CCWatch the Video Diagnosing and Classifying Disorders: The DSM -5The DSM-5 describes about 250 different psychological disorders. Each disorder is
described in terms of its symptoms, the typical path the disorder takes as it progresses,
and a checklist of specific criteria that must be met in order for the diagnosis of that dis-
order to be made. Whereas previous editions of the manual divided disorders and rele-
vant facts about the person being diagnosed along five different categories, or axes, the
DSM-5 uses a single axis for all disorders, with provisions for also noting significant and
relevant facts about the individual (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).
A few of the 20 categories of disorders that can be diagnosed include depressive disor-
ders, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders, feeding and
eating disorders, and neurodevelopmental disorders such as ADHD ( American Psychiat-
ric Association, 2013). Other categories include personality disorders, intellectual disability,
trauma- and stressor-related disorders, and obsessive-compulsive and related disorders.
While the diagnosis of psychological disorders into categories, based on signs and
symptoms, has been the prevalent approach for many years, it is not the only way to think
about psychological disorders. In fact, continuing advances in neuroimaging, genetics,
and cognitive science have led the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to call for a
change in the way we think about and study disorders through the launch of their Research
Domain Criteria (RDoC) project. This project promotes research that incorporates all of
these advances, as well as other types of information, to provide a knowledge base for a
new system of classifying psychological disorders (Insel, 2013). The RDoC research matrix
is a framework consisting of several domains, each containing certain measurable and
related ideas or constructs. For example, one domain is “negative valence systems” and