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Critical Thinking in Clinical Assessment and Diagnosis pp 15–44Cite as

Epistemological Issues in Diagnosis and Assessment

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Part of the Essential Clinical Social Work Series book series (ECSWS)

Abstract

This book begins with a thoughtful exploration of two fundamental questions that underlie all clinical decisions. First, what exactly is a “mental disorder,” as opposed to other kinds of suffering or maladaptive behavior that we would call non-mental disorders? What makes a disorder specifically mental? And second, on what do we base these definitions and distinctions? What do we consider reliable (and unreliable) sources of knowledge, and what are some of the pitfalls in our assumptions about what we “know” and how we’ve come to “know” it? Common cognitive errors are explored, along with their consequences. These include circular reasoning, the difficulty of determining threshold or cut-off point, assumptions about causality, and the problems inherent in mental heuristics such as anchoring and availability. The chapter then explores the role of labels and labeling theory, the aims and limitations of classification systems such as the DSM, and the challenge of trying to develop a way to think about mental disorder that is useful for both general purposes (to make predictions based on shared characteristics) and specific aims (to understand and help particular individuals).

Keywords

  • Anchoring
  • Availability
  • Continuum
  • Correlation
  • Deviance
  • Dysfunction
  • Heuristic
  • Nomothetic and idiographic
  • Reification
  • Sensitivity
  • Specificity
  • Syndrome
  • Threshold

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School for Social Work, Smith College, Northampton, MA, USA

    Barbara Probst

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  1. Barbara Probst
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Correspondence to Barbara Probst .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social Work, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, USA

    Barbara Probst

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Probst, B. (2015). Epistemological Issues in Diagnosis and Assessment. In: Probst, B. (eds) Critical Thinking in Clinical Assessment and Diagnosis. Essential Clinical Social Work Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17774-8_2

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