This book is about the doing and experiencing of diagnosis in everyday life. Diagnoses are revealed as interactive negotiations rather than as the assigning of diagnostic labels. The authors demonstrate, through detailed discourse analyses, how the diagnostic process depends on power and accountability as expressed through the talk of those engaged in the diagnostic process. The authors also show that diagnostic decisions are not only made by professional experts trained in the art and science of diagnosis, but they can also be made by anyone trying to figure out the nature of everyday problems. Finally, diagnostic reasoning is found to extend beyond typical diagnostic situations, occurring in unexpected places such as written letters of recommendation and talk about the nature of communication. Together, the chapters in this book demonstrate how diagnosis is a communication practice deeply rooted in our culture. The book is interdisciplinary and unusually broad in its focus. The authors come from different experiential scholarly backgrounds. Each of them takes a different look at the impact and nature of the diagnostic process. The diagnoses discussed include autism, Alzheimer’s disease, speech and language disorders, and menopause. The focus is not only on the here and now of the diagnostic interaction, but also on how diagnoses and diagnostic processes change over time. The book can serve as an undergraduate or graduate text for courses offered in various disciplines, including communication, sociology, anthropology, communication disorders, audiology, linguistics, medicine, and disability studies.

The publication of the Cultural Formulation Outline in the DSM-IV represented a significant event in the history of standard diagnostic systems. It was the first systematic attempt at placing cultural and contextual factors as an integral component of the diagnostic process. The year was 1994 and its coming was ripe since the multicultural explosion due to migration, refugees, and globalization on the ethnic composition of the U.S. population made it compelling to strive for culturally attuned psychiatric care. Understanding the limitations of a dry symptomatological approach in helping clinicians grasp the intricacies of the experience, presentation, and course of mental illness, the NIMH Group on Culture and Diagnosis proposed to appraise, in close collaboration with the patient, the cultural framework of the patient's identity, illness experience, contextual factors, and clinician-patient relationship, and to narrate this along the lines of five major domains. By articulating the patient's experience and the standard symptomatological description of a case, the clinician may be better able to arrive at a more useful understanding of the case for clinical care purposes. Furthermore, attending to the context of the illness and the person of the patient may additionally enhance understanding of the case and enrich the database from which effective treatment can be planned. This reader is a rich collection of chapters relevant to the DSM-IV Cultural Formulation that covers the Cultural Formulation's historical and conceptual background, development, and characteristics. In addition, the reader discusses the prospects of the Cultural Formulation and provides clinical case illustrations of its utility in diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. Book jacket.

Part of PsycBOOKS collection.

Diagnosis in a Multicultural Context provides mental health professionals with materials to practice the application of cross-cultural variations on standard diagnostic guidelines. Freddy A. Paniagua offers clinical case examples to illustrate the cross-cultural variations applicable in the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of clients from four major cultural groups: African Americans, American Indians, Asians, and Hispanics.

Explains the role of nursing diagnosis in clinical practice; provides information on definitions, characteristics, related factors, and interventions for nursing diagnoses; and offers information on collaborative problems.

The unifying theme of this broad-reaching volume is that responsible, ethical, and effective social work practice rests on the diagnostic skills of the practitioner. Social work diagnosis refers to the conscious formulation of an ongoing set of decisions about the client and his or her situation, which serve as the basis for intervention-decisions for which the practitioner must be prepared to take responsibility. Diagnostic skill development is an ongoing process principally enhanced by a continuous commitment to remain at the cutting edge of the profession's body of knowledge, but one of the challenges for today's practitioner is keeping abreast of the rapidly expanding body of knowledge contained in some 200 important social work periodicals in circulation. Francis J. Turner, a preeminent clinical scholar, brings together in one volume some of the best work published since 2000, each reflecting new insights into understanding psychosocial situations and innovative methods of applying knowledge and skills in an increasingly effective manner. Each of the 78 articles in this volume highlights some of the critical dimensions of contemporary social work practice, guiding clinicians to address four key aspects in order to craft an accurate diagnosis. The first section presents articles covering the developmental spectrum, each of which fully explains various ages and stages of development. The second section focuses on a range of specific situations, helping practitioners and students enrich their understanding of different types of problems they meet in contemporary practice, whether they are based in mental illness, psychosocial issues, or physical ailments. The third section addresses the crucial component of diversity, demonstrating the complexity and critical importance of truly understanding clients and their lives. The last section of the book discusses innovative approaches to practice, selected to offer practitioners easy access to the latest interventions for a host of contemporary challenges facing clients and their therapists. Broad in scope and tightly focused on the goal of providing the most up-to-date information necessary for accuracy in the diagnostic process, this volume represents some of the best research available to today's social workers.