Description
Book SynopsisThe sociologist Jason Schnittker looks at the multiple actors involved in crafting the DSM and the many interests that the manual hopes to serve.
The Diagnostic System urges us to become comfortable with the socially constructed nature of categorization and accept that a perfect taxonomy of mental-health disorders will remain elusive.
Trade ReviewThe particular strength of this very well-written critique of psychiatric diagnosis is to examine how the
DSM has a variety of constituencies—clinicians, researchers, patients, and the general public—that each has its own way of approaching the manual. -- Allan Horwitz, Board of Governors Professor of Sociology, Rutgers University
In an area too often marked by advocacy and polemic,
The Diagnostic System provides a well-informed, judicious, and, in fact, invaluable guide to a complex body of scholarship and controversy. Perhaps most important, it addresses those complex interrelationships between individual experience and the social, cultural, and institutional circumstances that in part constitute that experience. It is an important book on a foundational if elusive set of questions. -- Charles E. Rosenberg, professor of the history of science and medicine and the Ernest E. Monrad Professor in the Social Sciences, Harvard University
Sober, clear, and even-handed,
The Diagnostic System is an indispensable work. * Contemporary Sociology *
A fluent, incisive, and eminently useful account of the classificatory system that informs clinical practice and research in American psychiatry today. * American Journal of Sociology *
This book brings to light the difficult task of diagnosing psychiatric disorders with accuracy, reliability, and validity. Recommended. * Choice *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
1. The Contested Ontology of Psychiatric Disorders
2. What Diagnoses Are:
DSM-III and the Form of Contemporary Psychiatric Diagnoses
3.
DSM-III and the Descriptive Science of Psychiatric Disorders
4. Rethinking the
DSM5. How Professionals Use Diagnoses
6. How the Public Uses Diagnoses
7. How Scientists Use the
DSM8. How Cultures Use Diagnoses
9. The Contemporary Science of Psychiatric Nosology
10. The Endless Search for Validity
11. The Endurance of the Diagnostic System
Notes
Index
