Diagnosing Psychological Disorders: Videos & Practice Problems

A psychological disorder is defined as a significant disturbance in cognition, emotion, or behavior that causes distress or impairment in functioning. Key criteria for identifying a disorder include maladaptive behavior, distressing symptoms, and atypicality within cultural context. Diagnosis involves a professional's determination based on observed symptoms, which may not always meet diagnostic criteria. The DSM-5 and ICD-11 are essential diagnostic manuals that provide standardized criteria for consistent diagnosis and tracking of psychological disorders globally, though they are subject to ongoing research and revision.

Defining Psychological Disorders

This video, we're going to get into how we define psychological disorders. So a psychological or a mental disorder is essentially a significant disturbance in cognition, emotion, behavior, or any combination of those things that leads to distress in the person and/or impairment in functioning, or it has some kind of negative impact on that person's life. So when we think about whether a behavior or a thought has reached the level where we would consider it to be disordered, we often think of three main criteria. And I do want to be clear when I say disordered here, I don't mean, like, disorganized or chaotic. I mean, we have literally reached a level of, like, we could diagnose this person because their behavior has become so disordered.

So, again, we think of kind of three things. The first is, is this behavior or thought maladaptive? So is it destructive to the person? And that could be physically, emotionally, socially, occupationally, etcetera. Again, to the person or to others around them.

So, for example, if we have a person who has become so depressed that they have a really hard time getting out of bed and leaving the house, that could really threaten their occupational situation. They could potentially lose their job if they can't leave the house. It would also probably damage their social life, which would impact their emotional well-being probably. So that's what we mean by maladaptive. Now we also think about whether this behavior or thought is distressing to the person.

So, you know, it is upsetting or even potentially dangerous to the person and possibly to others around them. So, for example, a person who has developed some kind of hoarding behavior, you know, their house might become unsafe or unsanitary for them and their child to be living in. So that would be an example of that category. And then finally, we try to think about whether this behavior or thought is atypical. And this one's kind of tricky because obviously everyone's very different.

But we think about, you know, does this behavior go against typical behavior within that person's cultural context? And when we think about atypical, we're not only thinking about behavior in a cultural context but we might also be thinking about typical in terms of developmental norms. So, for example, an autistic child might be a little bit behind on their developmental milestones and that might be the first indication that we might need to be looking for some kind of neurodivergence in that child. So those are kind of three criteria that we use when thinking about whether something has kind of become disordered. Now, one thing to note and we will talk about this a little bit more is that we diagnose psychological disorders by examining symptoms that occur within a set time frame.

So as we begin to go through diagnostic criteria a bit later in the chapter, you'll see how for every disorder, we kind of look at symptoms within a certain set time. So, for example, for anxiety disorders, we often look at symptoms within, like, a three-month time frame. So that's kind of how we do that. Now, I do want to note before we head out that there is no single universally agreed-upon definition or criteria for what constitutes a psychological disorder. This is obviously a really, really complex issue, and we also have to account that historically our understanding of psychological disorders is changing constantly.

It has changed very rapidly over the past few decades, and so this definition needs to be flexible to constantly account for the way that we are conceptualizing and understanding disorders. So please don't think that this is necessarily, like, the end-all-be-all definition of psychological disorder. You might see slightly different ones in your textbook. One thing to note, however, is that pretty much all definitions of psychological disorder involve the two components that we have here. So they involve the idea that it is distressing or upsetting to the person and that there is some kind of impairment in functioning or negative impact on the person's life.

Those two criteria stay pretty stable across all definitions. Alright. So that is defining psychological disorders, and I will see you guys in our next one. Bye-bye.

Example 1

Alright. So this example is asking us what the criteria are for determining if a behavior or thought is disordered. Let's read through them. We'll give a little check mark to the ones that are correct. So number one, the behavior or thought is maladaptive to the person, and that is something that we are looking for.

Is it impacting them, you know, socially, occupationally, financially, emotionally, etc.? So that is correct. Number two is the behavior or thought is disturbing or upsetting to the person. We do also look for that. That's even in the definition of what a psychological disorder is.

And then number three reads the behavior or thought is typical within the cultural context, and that is incorrect. We would expect that behavior or thought to be atypical or unusual within that person's cultural context. So it looks like our answer is going to be a. Both one and two are criteria that we use to determine if a behavior or thought is disordered. And there you go.

True or False: if false, choose the answer that best corrects the statement.
Psychological disorders are significant disruptions in cognition, emotion, and behavior that lead to impaired function and/or distress.

• A. True.
• B. False, psychological disorders must be significant and permanent.
• C. False, psychological disorders do not necessarily lead to distress or impairment of function.
• D. False, psychological disorders rarely involve disruptions in behavior.

Answer: (A)

Clarifying Terminology

In this video, I just wanted to clarify some terminology that we are going to encounter in this chapter just to make sure that we are all on the same page when we hear these terms. So the first term is psychopathology and this gets thrown around a lot when we talk about disorders. Psychopathology actually has two different definitions or two ways to use it. The first is that it can indicate the study of psychological disorders. You could say something like Dr. Dixon is a psychopathologist who specializes in anxiety.

Now we can also use this term to signify the presence of a psychological disorder. You could say the patient exhibits signs of psychopathology including depressed mood and social withdrawal. So those are the two ways to use that term. Our next term is symptom. I'm sure you're all familiar with this but, again, just so that we're all on the same page, symptoms include behaviors, thoughts, and emotions that may indicate the presence of a disorder.

Symptoms can be subjectively reported by the person experiencing them or objectively observed by people around them or professionals around them. I do want to make a very important note here which is that having symptoms of a disorder does not necessarily mean that a person meets the diagnostic criteria. As we go through the diagnostic criteria for different disorders, you're going to probably see that some of the symptoms apply to you and that's totally normal. We all exhibit some symptoms of some disorders sometimes. This is part of the human experience, but having some symptoms does not mean that you necessarily meet the level or diagnostic criteria.

Alright, and our final term is diagnosis. Diagnosis just means that there has been a determination by a professional, such as a psychologist or a psychiatrist, as to whether or not the disorder is present. To be clear, a disorder can be present without an official diagnosis, but if we say the term diagnosis, this is what we mean. We mean that a professional has looked at that person and determined that the disorder is present in them. Alright, so those are our terms that you will probably see in this chapter and I will see you guys in the next one.

Bye bye.

Example 2

Alright, so for this one we're going to be matching the terms in the box to the definitions here and some terms may be used more than once and we know that that's probably going to be psychopathology, right, because we know that psychopathology has two different definitions. Alright, so number one is the presence of a psychological disorder. So that is something that we can use the term psychopathology to refer to, right? We could say that a patient exhibits signs of psychopathology or the presence of some kind of disorder. And we will put an a there.

The next one reads a professional determination of whether a disorder is present. If we're talking about a professional determination, then we are talking about a diagnosis. Right? So we'll put a c. The third one reads the study of psychological disorders, and that is another way to use the term psychopathology.

So we could say that, you know, so and so is a psychopathologist. Right? That they study psychological disorders. We'll put an a there. And then finally, our last one is behaviors, thoughts, and emotions that indicate a disorder and that sounds like symptoms, right?

So we'll put a b. Alright, there you have it and I will see you in the next one. Bye bye.

While reading her psychology textbook, Andrea noticed that she sometimes experiences the symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder. Does Andrea qualify for a diagnosis?

• A. Yes, definitely, because her symptoms indicate the presence of a disorder.
• B. Yes, definitely, because she is using a reputable source to get information.
• C. Not necessarily, because getting a diagnosis requires analytical blood testing.
• D. Not necessarily, because having symptoms does not necessarily mean you meet the diagnostic criteria.

Answer: (D)

Diagnostic Manuals

This video, we're going to be going over diagnostic manuals that are used in psychology. And these are very important because, you know, clinicians and researchers need to have consistent and unified diagnostic criteria to be using. It would be chaos if every single clinician was just freestyling all of their diagnoses, right? These are people's medical diagnoses. We need to make sure that they are, you know, consistent and unified across all practitioners and that is where these manuals come in.

We're going to go over two different classification systems or manuals. Our first one is called the DSM-five and DSM stands for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and we're also going to go over the ICD 11. ICD stands for the International Classification of Diseases. So we're going to begin over here with the DSM-five. This was first released in 1952, but it has undergone multiple revisions since then.

And it has undergone five revisions to be exact, which is where we get DSM five. Now, the publisher of this is the American Psychiatric Association, and the DSM is designed to provide diagnostic criteria. So it provides symptoms as well as the time frame that we would expect to see those symptoms in. It also offers some additional information when we have it, for example, typical age of onset, that's going to be more important for some disorders like schizophrenia compared to others. It often will include things like predisposing factors, any known sex ratios, so is it more commonly diagnosed in women versus men, etcetera, as well as any cultural considerations to take into account when making a diagnosis.

Now the DSM-five, generally speaking, is more popular in The United States and it is used in both clinical and research settings here in The US. So That is the DSM-five. Now we're going to move over to the ICD-eleven. This was first released around the same time as the original DSM, so in 1948, and it has also undergone multiple revisions, 11 of them. And the publisher of the ICD is the World Health Organization.

And what's unique about it is that it's actually a classification system for all diseases, not just psychological disorders. And this is a very popular classification system globally. So the ICD 11 is used primarily for insurance tracking as well as just tracking incidence rates and morbidity rates just broadly, so at the national level and at the global level. So we can see how common is this disease or disorder and what is the morbidity rate of this disorder, again at the national and global levels. Now one thing to note is that even though the DSM-five is more popular in The United States for clinical and research settings, we do use the ICD insurance codes for our insurance tracking here in The US to contribute to that global tracking.

Now to quickly go over some of the pros and cons of using these manuals, the pros we've kind of already covered. So they allow for consistent tracking of disorders, again, at the national and global level, and they provide consistent diagnostic measures for all, practitioners and researchers to be using. That is very good. However, the cons are that these manuals, particularly speaking about the DSM, is that they're only going to be as good as our current research. Now, our research on psychological disorders is better than it has ever been, which is good news.

However, we're still learning a lot. We say this all the time. You guys know people are complicated. Brains are complicated. Psychological disorders and how we conceptualize them is a really complicated issue.

And so the DSM five and the ICD are kind of the best that we can do right now, but that does not mean that they are imperfect or infallible, and we will always be continually updating them and revising them as we learn more. So they're not perfect, but they're kind of the best we can do at the moment. And I do want to note just moving forward all of the content in this course and the rest of the content in this chapter is going to be based on DSM diagnostic criteria just so that you are aware. Alright. So those are the diagnostic manuals that we use in psychology, and I will see you guys in the next one.

Bye bye.

Example 3

Alright. So for this one, for each situation here, we're going to list a consideration that a doctor or practitioner should have to take into account before prescribing medication to the person. And I did write out my answers a little bit just so that you're not watching me write for the next three minutes. So let's go into the first one, which is Joe goes to his general practitioner complaining of low mood and feeling apathetic lately. He asks to be put on medication for depression.

So in this case, it sounds like it's a pretty new development for Joe, and the symptoms, while certainly unpleasant, don't sound like they are the most severe quite yet. So his practitioner might want to think about whether something like psychotherapy could also be effective in this instance. Like, should we be jumping straight to antidepressant medication necessarily? And maybe the answer is yes, but we should at least be considering psychotherapy as an option in a case like this. Alright.

So, Michelle is pregnant and showing signs of depression. She thinks medication might be helpful. So in this case, because Michelle is pregnant, we would want to consider which medications have been tested on pregnant people and which medications we know for a fact would be safe for both the pregnant person as well as the fetus.

Finally, Kathleen has anxiety and wants to start taking Xanax. Kathleen works in construction and frequently operates heavy machinery. So we know that one of the most common side effects of anti-anxiety medication is often drowsiness and sedation. Right? We want those meds to have a tranquilizing effect, but sometimes if the if the dosage is not appropriate, they can make people extremely drowsy. And because she frequently operates heavy machinery, we would really want to be aware of those side effects and how they, you know, how this medication is affecting her and make sure that her dosage is really appropriate for her. Alright, so that is our example here and I will see you guys in the next one.

Bye bye!

What does the "5" stand for in DSM-5?

• A. It describes the five categories of mental illness covered in the manual.
• B. It is the edition number since the manual is continually revised and updated.
• C. It foreshadows the five criteria given for each disorder: name, age, prevalence, symptoms, & treatment.
• D. It denotes that this edition of the DSM was released in 2005.

Answer: (B)

Which of the following is the primary aim of the DSM-5?

• A. To provide disease descriptions for insurance companies to assess payment and keep accurate records.
• B. To give descriptions of all types of illnesses.
• C. To set the standard of what is normal and what is abnormal.
• D. To provide diagnostic categories for mental disorders for clinicians and researchers.

Answer: (D)

Here’s what students ask on this topic:

What are the key criteria for diagnosing psychological disorders?

The key criteria for diagnosing psychological disorders include evaluating whether the behavior is maladaptive, distressing, and atypical within the cultural context. Maladaptive behavior is destructive to the person or others, affecting physical, emotional, social, or occupational aspects. Distressing behavior is upsetting or potentially dangerous to the individual or those around them. Atypical behavior deviates from cultural norms or developmental milestones. These criteria help determine if a behavior or thought has reached a level where it can be considered disordered. Additionally, symptoms are examined within a set timeframe, as seen in diagnostic manuals like the DSM-5 and ICD-11, which provide standardized criteria for mental disorders.

How do the DSM-5 and ICD-11 differ in diagnosing psychological disorders?

The DSM-5 and ICD-11 are both diagnostic manuals used in psychology, but they differ in scope and application. The DSM-5, published by the American Psychiatric Association, focuses specifically on mental disorders, providing detailed diagnostic criteria, symptoms, and timeframes. It is widely used in the United States for clinical and research settings. The ICD-11, published by the World Health Organization, is a classification system for all diseases, not just psychological disorders, and is used globally for insurance tracking and monitoring incidence and morbidity rates. While the DSM-5 is more popular in the U.S., the ICD-11 contributes to global tracking, ensuring consistency in diagnosis and treatment across different regions.

What is the role of symptoms in diagnosing psychological disorders?

Symptoms play a crucial role in diagnosing psychological disorders as they include behaviors, thoughts, and emotions that may indicate the presence of a disorder. Symptoms can be subjectively reported by the individual or objectively observed by professionals. However, having symptoms does not necessarily mean a person meets diagnostic criteria for a disorder. Diagnosis requires a professional determination, considering the severity, duration, and impact of symptoms on functioning. Diagnostic manuals like the DSM-5 provide standardized criteria, ensuring consistent evaluation of symptoms within a set timeframe. Understanding symptoms is essential for identifying potential disorders and guiding treatment decisions.

Why is continuous research important in the field of psychological disorders?

Continuous research is vital in the field of psychological disorders because our understanding of these complex issues is constantly evolving. As research advances, it informs the definitions and criteria used in diagnostic manuals like the DSM-5 and ICD-11, ensuring they reflect the latest scientific knowledge. Psychological disorders involve intricate interactions between biological, psychological, and social factors, making them challenging to conceptualize. Ongoing research helps refine diagnostic criteria, improve treatment approaches, and enhance our understanding of the underlying mechanisms. This dynamic process ensures that mental health professionals can provide the most effective care, adapting to new insights and discoveries.

What is psychopathology and how is it used in psychology?

Psychopathology refers to the study of psychological disorders and can also signify the presence of a disorder. In psychology, it is used to understand the nature, causes, and development of mental disorders. As a field of study, psychopathology examines symptoms, diagnostic criteria, and treatment options, contributing to the development of diagnostic manuals like the DSM-5 and ICD-11. When used to indicate the presence of a disorder, it describes the symptoms and behaviors associated with specific conditions. Understanding psychopathology is essential for mental health professionals to diagnose accurately, develop effective treatment plans, and advance research in the field.