PSYC 337 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Intellectual Disability, Sleepwalking, Generalized Anxiety Disorder
9 Apr 2018
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Document Summary
Human tendency to classify everything from an early age our taxonomy gets refined as our understanding becomes more sophisticated with age. We begin to make more specific distinctions among objects. Diagnostic systems for mental disorders serve several functions: Provides a description of different mental disorders eg. how do the features of panic disorder differ from depression or schizophrenia. Provides us with a vocabulary for communicating the different mental disorders to others. Psychopathology researchers rely on diagnostic systems to identify individuals who meet criteria for a particular disorder and to exclude individuals who do not meet criteria for that disorder. Accurate diagnosis provides important information for effective clinical intervention. Needed for surveying population health and for understanding the prevalence and etiology of mental health problems. Feedback loop exists between the classification/diagnostic systems and findings from them the diagnostic system helps to specify which areas to research and research findings in turn help to improve diagnostic systems.
