Axes Including the Worth and

¶ … axes including the worth and limitations of each axis and which difficulties might be encountered in determining of each axis for any given patient. DSM-IV organizes its psychiatric diagnosis into five different dimensions (axis) relating to different aspects of disorder or mental disability The axes are the following: Axis I: Clinical disorders that include the major mental and learning disorders as well as substance abuse disorders. Common disorders in this category include schizophrenia, bulimia nervosa, anorexia nervosa, ADHD, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety disorders and autism spectrum disorders.

Axis II: Personality disorders and intellectual disabilities with a rating scale for the latter. Common disorders here include personality disorders such as paranoid personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, narcissist personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, intellectual disabilities, histrionic personality disorder, avoidant personality disorder, and dependent personality disorder. Axis III: Acute medical and physical disorders and conditions whether mental or behavioral.

Common disorders here include brain injuries and other organic disorders that may present symptoms that are similar to other diseases or may aggravate existing conditions. Axis IV: Psychosocial and environmental factors instigating disabilities and disorders Common problem here include poverty, dysfunctional families and other psychosocial and environmental factors that can negatively impact a person's personality and life. Axis V: "Global Assessment of Functioning" or "Children's Global Assessment Scale" for children and teens under age 19. This is an assessment of a person's ability to cope with normality.

The scale starts from 10 ("persistent danger of severely hurting self or others") to 100 ("superior functioning in a wide range of activities") (The Fives Axes of DSM-IV; web) Difficulties that might be encountered in determining of each axis for any given patient. Challenges inherent in prescribing diagnosis as peer the DSM axes are several.

One of them (as formulated by Cooksey & Brown, 1998) consists of the fact that the consensus and constructs were constructed by an elite groups of scientists who, spending their time in Ivory Tower seclusion and originating from more privileged backgrounds, did not formulate their decision upon a reality out there but rather upon artificial laboratory experiments that were carried out upon a select, and inevitably limited sample of people and upon contemporary biopsychological theories and paradigms.

By rejecting the correspondence theory of truth (namely, as truth corresponding to reality) and postulating instead a relative strata of truth as consisting of a construction of the human mind, the axes are a set of subjective opinions formulated by a socially privileged and credentialed class of individuals who are separate from their prescribed reality (Duffy, et al. (2002). Caplan (2001) (in (Duffy, et al.

2002) provides an instance of social wrongs that can consequent from this with the DSM recommendation for a new category called "Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder." Not only is there no hard evidence to support this category, but also the symptom could have been caused by environmental, instead of biological, causes. Remove the environmental stressor and no such 'disease' exists. Instead the DSM axes, created by socially privileged individuals, only harm these women and teens and destroy their socioeconomic.