Citation

Paniagua FA. Sage open 2018; 8(1): e2158244018756165.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/2158244018756165

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Mental health practitioners in the United States often use two classification systems for mental disorders, namely, the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM-5). A critical issue when diagnosing people with mental disorders is to ensure that cultural variables do not potentially explain the presentation of symptoms. A fundamental difference between the two classification systems is that the ICD is mute regarding the need to consider such variables in this context of diagnosing people with mental disorders, whereas the DSM-5 does alert mental health practitioners that they should not make a diagnosis in this context without considering the cultural variables potentially affecting the assessment and diagnosis of such disorders. This difference between the two classification systems is illustrated with a sample of mental disorders in both systems.

Language: en