DSM-5: Ready or Not

Amidst much hair-tearing and hand-wringing, the DSM-5 has settled into its place as one of our central textbooks of mental disease. Now, after having had a chance to live with it for almost a year, it is possible to stand back and assess the impact of all the revisions and changes.

In this web conference, we will go through the book and hit the highlights of the revisions, not just to describe how criteria have been updated, but why. In addition, we will address the major controversies surrounding the changes in diagnoses and try to assess their impact on our future mental health practices.

Please be aware that this presentation will not be giving complete, specific criteria for various disorders and is not intended to substitute for the actual DSM-5.

This web conference is beginning instructional level and designed to help clinicians:

1. Discuss the major controversies concerning DSM-5 and the arguments for and against its revisions;
2. Evaluate the most significant changes in DSM-5 versus DSM-IV;
3. Explain the significance and difficulty of determining what belongs in the DSM-5;
4. Describe the resources in DSM-5 other than those setting criteria for mental diseases.

If you have any questions or concerns about this web conference or would like more information, please contact us here.

Event Reviews from Members

He was clear and concise and sounded extremely knowledgeable. - Julie Kotler, LCPC, LCPAT, ATR-BC

Continuing Education (CE) Information

Two CE credits will be provided by GoodTherapy.org for attending this web conference in its entirety.

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To receive CE credit hours for an archived event, you will need to complete a survey as well as a 12 or 15-question exam, verifying that you listened to or watched the event in its entirety. Archived CE events generally are considered "homestudy" by licensing boards.

Registration Information

Premium or Pro Membership with GoodTherapy includes access to this web conference at no cost. Not yet a Premium or Pro Member? Mental health professionals can attend this live web conference for $30.95 or access the homestudy recording for $15.50.

If the event is canceled by GoodTherapy, registrants who purchased the event will be notified and the charge for the event will be refunded

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Highlights

We use [the DSM] for all of these different things, and of course it fails. It fails because it's an imperfect textbook that is always being changed. But that's what we have, and that's what we have to learn to live with. I will tell you that the changes in DSM-5 are relatively modest, and if you can live with DSM-IV, you can live with DSM-5. There's not that big of a fundamental difference in thinking about it. - David Mays, MD, PhD

There are things in there that I think most of us would agree are brain diseases, like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and maybe some very severe depression and Alzheimer's disease. But there's also things in DSM that do not reflect a disordered brain, but rather reflect a disordered environment. You get a kid with conduct disorder, and you look at their home, and they've been raised in a chaotic, abusive, neglectful home, and you don't think this kid's got a bad brain. This kid's got a normal brain that's responded to these very abnormal circumstances. So some of the things in DSM are what I call adaptation disorders. They're things that normal people do when you put them in certain environments.

And then other things in DSM have to do with what happens to your brain when something goes wrong with your body. You get hypothyroid, you end up showing symptoms of depression. You get hyperthyroid, you end up looking like you're anxious and attention-impaired. Drug addiction is a real good example of what happens if you subject your brain to regular high amounts of alcohol or cocaine or something. And then finally, we have what we might talk about as deviancies. Paraphilias, personality disorders, things that we just don't like in our particular culture. We think that it's maladaptive. - David Mays, MD, PhD