Why do Borderline Personality Disorder and Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Get Confused? The World Health Organization’s 11th revision of the International Classification of Disease defines Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) as meeting full criteria for PTSD plus symptoms of disturbances in self-organization. Disturbances in self-organization can best be categorized as experiencing strong emotional dysregulation, negative […]
You are in physical pain. You go to your doctor, and after identifying where you feel pain and how long it has been going on, a medical profession proceeds to ask you a number of questions. You may be given a pain scale chart, a numeric scale (NRS – Numeric Rating Scale) sometimes replaced or […]
Primary care physicians and pediatricians are often the first ones to provide a mental health diagnoses and prescribe psychotropic medications. In fact, one study found the proportion of primary care visits at which antidepressants were prescribed, but no psychiatric diagnosis was noted in the record, increased from 59.5% to 72.7% from 1996 to 2007 (Mojtabai […]
A Proposal of Two Critical Questions for All Psychological Diagnosis I am now publishing a sequence of two books with Lexington Books. The first is A Democratic Mind: Psychiatry and Psychology with Fewer Meds and More Soul, and the second is Psychotherapy for A Democratic Mind: Treatment of Intimacy, Tragedy, Violence and Evil. Psychotherapy for […]
Clients request, question, or reject information related to their diagnoses at various times, and in a myriad of ways (e.g., “My partner says I have Borderline Personality Disorder, do I?”, “My mood is all over the place! Do you think I’m bipolar?”, “Maybe it’s ADHD?”). At intake, clients seek clarification of the nature of their […]
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a class of developmental disorders typically diagnosed during childhood. Per the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), ASD is characterized by social deficits and repetitive behavioral patterns, which cause clinically significant impairment, and are not better explained by intellectual disability (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). In adulthood, these […]