Using DSM-IV: A Clinician's Guide to Psychiatric Diagnosis (Developments in Clinical Psychiatry) - Hardcover

Labruzza, Anthony L.; Mendez-Villarrubia, Jose M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1568213336 ISBN 13: 9781568213330

Publisher: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1977

Synopsis

In Using DSM-IV, Dr. Anthony LaBruzza and Jose Mendez-Villarrubia offer the needed supplement to DSM-IV. Their book, a veritable road map for DSM-IV, explains the technical language and hierarchical classifications of DSM-IV while it demonstrates how the system can be adapted to a clinical approach. In cogent prose replete with examples, the authors show how to use DSM-IV to arrive at accurate diagnoses that include, rather than forsake, dynamic conceptualizations of clients' psychological functioning. The authors review each DSM-IV diagnostic category, helping the reader to see what clients with a specific pathology look like, what is actually needed to qualify for the disorder, and what similar disorders to rule out. Because theirs is a fundamentally humane and clinical approach to mental illness, LaBruzza and Mendez-Villarrubia suggest that any interview, even a mental status exam, should be a helpful experience for the client. They show how to embed a diagnostic interview in an ongoing clinical process and thus relate to and understand each client as unique, even while finding the right diagnostic category for him or her. This attunement to individuals also enables LaBruzza and Mendez-Villarrubia to consider issues of cultural diversity. Both authors have extensive experience working with Hispanic populations and have included an in-depth chapter on assessing Hispanic clients. In this new era of managed health care, the demand for uniform, accurate diagnoses has never been higher. Facility with the DSM-IV system is imperative. But so too is a thoughtful understanding of clients. Using DSM-IV is the one resource that can help clinicians combine descriptive and dynamic orientations to clients to produce a truly comprehensive diagnosis. As an explanatory and inclusive manual of DSM-IV, this is the essential book.

About this title

About the Author

Anthony L. LaBruzza, M.D., a psychiatrist, is chief of medicine and medical director of the Community Services Division at the Greater Bridgeport Community Mental Health Center in Bridgeport, Connecticut. José M. Méndez-Villarrubia, M.A., is a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology. He is currently on the clinical staff at the Greater Bridgeport Community Mental Health Center.

Review

This book will be welcomed by many with both gratitude and relief: an engaging, thoughtful, moral, and humanistically responsible guide to the DSM-IV. This erudite and thoroughly readable work should be used generously as an indispensable and required text for psychopathology courses in all training institutions for mental health professionals. The explicit focus on issues of diversity in culture, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation is not only laudable for its presence, but for its clarity of exposition. (Ellenhorn, Theodore J. Ph.D)

LaBruzza and Méndez-Villarrubia have written a highly readable companion book to DSM-IV. The unique chapter dealing with mental illness in Hispanic cultures is particularly informative. This volume will be very useful for a wide range of mental health professionals. (Malcolm B. Bowers, Jr., M.D.)

Dr. LaBruzza goes beyond making DSM-IV user friendly. He brings a descriptive manual to life by placing it in the context of the broad scope of Western thought about the form and nature of mental illness. (Peter Kramer, M.D.)

A real lodestar for mental health professionals that explains the whys, wheres, and whens of our latest diagnostic bible and its development. This book, less than half the size of the DSM-IV, is a gem of information and erudition that should be within reach of any colleague involved in patient evaluation. (Stephen Fleck, M.D.)

Edition details

• Publisher: Jason Aronson, Inc.
• Publication date: 1977
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1568213336
• ISBN 13: 9781568213330
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 459