Mental health psychology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Mental health psychology - Essay Example7). And until today, the question as to what defines normality from abnormality, remains debatable. But it was also in defining and categorically classifying mental disorders that psychiatry which was under a decade severe attack in the 70s won its bid for professional legitimacy and authority in this field, as brought slightly by the third edition of the American Psychiatric Associations diagnostically based Diagnostic and statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, commonly referred to as DSM-III (Mayes & Horwitz, 2005, p. 249 Kirk & Kutchins, 1994, p. 71). As Robert Spitzer, the primary force in the development of DSM-III, declared Whether we like it or not, the issue of defining the boundaries of mental and medical disorder cannot be ignored. Increasingly thither is pressure for the medical profession and psychiatry in particular to define its area of prime certificate of indebtedness (cited in Healy, 1997, p. 233).However, although DSM-II I had given so much influence to psychiatry, it did not actually resolve old-age questions regarding mental health, particularly so that Psychiatric diagnosis provides the fundamental rubric for discourse about mental illness (Kirk & Kutchins, 1992, p.10). Additionally, although it is immediately widely used as a biblical text not only by psychiatrists only even by lawyers, federal agents, insurance agents, pharmaceuticals, it is on the other hand criticised in different fronts, which when analysed, such criticisms essentially attack DSMs integrity as to its true intention, as to its scientific claims, and as to its usefulness. Whether such criticisms hold water could be scrutinised from critically evaluating DSMs origin and contemporary role.The development of DSM from its very beginning to its up-to-the-minute version has consistently compromised with other political and financial interests shrouding its validity as a scientific, diagnostic legal document for