People have told me that they are overwhelmed, confused, and even a bit disoriented by all the changes. They have some anxiety with the upcoming conversion to the DSM-5 and the many ways it will affect them as they diagnose people, and the major adjustments that agencies will need to make to adapt.
I'll share with you three of the areas that arouse the most passionate responses from people.
No More Multiaxial System
The change that has been universally upsetting to people in my workshops is the loss of the multiaxial system.
We started using five axes to formulate a diagnosis when the DSM-III-R came out in 1987. Ever since then, we’ve had five main pieces of information that made up our diagnostic impression.
Axis I listed clinical disorders. Axis II included personality disorders and mental retardation. Axis III was where we listed general medical conditions. Axis IV was where we described psychosocial and environmental problems. Axis V was the place to put the Global Assessment of Functioning (the GAF), which summarized how severely a person was affected by his or her mental health condition.
Those five aspects of a diagnosis are no longer going to be listed in the diagnostic description. Instead, diagnoses will just be recorded in a list, with the principle diagnosis being listed first, and others following in order of importance to treatment.
We can reflect contributing factors by using appropriate V codes, and these factors will be reflected in the body of the assessment information (as always), but they will no longer be part of the diagnosis. We will document those factors in our notes, but as one workshop participant lamented, “But nobody reads my assessment!”
Another participant shared her observation, “It seems like we’re losing something important by taking that information away from being front and center in terms of importance. I really like being able to look at the five axes of a diagnosis and being able to get a feel for the person. It’s like seeing a snapshot of the person being treated, and it gives a much fuller picture of someone.”
Let’s look at an example of what a diagnosis would look like now.