Purpose of Diagnosis

Purpose of Diagnosis

By

Tonya Redditt

Submitted in Partiall Fullfillment

Instructor : L. Jones

Springfield College

As we discussed in class people go the doctor’s off to get their overall body checked out; they go to the dentist to have their teeth fixed; and we go our respective houses of worship when we seek spiritual guidance. We go to these places to find out things or seek counsel. The result of that counsel is basically a diagnosis of what plagues you. It could be a cancer diagnosis, a tooth needing pulled or prayer for the weak and suffering. You reach out to those different agents for healing of some sort and they provide it. The whole purpose for diagnosis is to receive treatment. According to the Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders website, one of the main purposes of diagnosis is to guide treatment planning. It is also helps establish a ‘prognosis for the patient and his or her family, and it helps to enable communication among the professionals (including insurers) involved in the patient’s care.’ Also a recognized DSM diagnosis may be necessary to receive insurance coverage for medical services.

A diagnosis can be considered the identifying and labeling of a disease based on the signs it displays and symptoms. Mental health clinicians use the criteria found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM, published by the American Psychiatric Association. So when we diagnose our clients they have to be in accordance to the DSM. These guidelines are in place to insure that each patient is evaluated by the same code, to assure proper treatment and to avoid conflict of medications and so forth. We must be careful when we diagnose patients because we do not want to assume that one issue is caused by one thing and find out later that there are other contributing factors. The mental health professional is responsible for interviewing and observing the client to get their diagnosis and sometimes special testing is...