Nosology

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According to the dictionary of literary terms, nosology is a term that is used to refer to a branch of medical science that deals with the classification of diseases and disorders, both physical and mental. However, in abnormal psychology, the term is used to refer to the identification and classification of abnormal behaviors, which include behavior patterns, emotions, and thought, which may and may not be as a result of a mental disorder (Kosson et al, 2006). Currently, there are different classification methods that can be used in the process of classifying abnormal behavior patterns in individual. However, to some scholars, psychiatrists, and psychologists the current efforts to classify diseases and disorders have not turned out well (Shorter, …show more content…

However, clinical psychologists have not waited for scholars and researchers in the field to come up with a resolution to their debate before naming, treating, and studying abnormal disorders. Most clinical psychologists follow the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (DSM) from the American Psychiatric Association as their everyday guide for mental health conditions to perform assessments, conduct therapy, as well as conducting and executing research studies. Another major nosologic system for the classification of mental disorders is the International Classification of Diseases …show more content…

Lilienfeld & Landfield (2008) established that DSM-II was revision of DSM-I. The two versions contained only three broad categories of disorders: psychoses, a category that would today contain today's schizophrenia, character disorders (a category for today's personality disorders), and neuroses that would house today's major depression conditions, bipolar disorders, and anxiety disorders. Furthermore, in their article, Langenbucher & Nathan (2006) assert that the two nosology criteria for abnormal psychology contained definitions of disorders that were not scientifically or empirically based. Instead, both DSM-I and DSM-II represented an accumulated clinical wisdom of a portion of psychiatrists who comprised the DSM taskforce. Langenbucher and Nathan (2006) further argue that the two nosologies were products of psychiatrists with psychoanalytic orientation and that the descriptions of disorders in the two nosologies were simply prose - one paragraphed descriptions per disorder, which lacked specific symptoms or criteria of classification. As a results, DSM-I and DSM-II had very limited utility for clinical psychiatrists (Woo & Keatinge,

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