journey's and path's
This past week was the start of a new term, and this always brings an overwhelming amount of new information: so much maintenance of information so you don't internally combust from the stress. During my previous education, the phrase used to capture this stage and the school process was "It's like drinking out of a fire hose." I always found this perfectly appropriate.
This fire-hose term covers the light and easily digestible content (sarcasm) of "Ethics in Counselling" and "Psychopathology," so my weeks are full of living in a mental storm of enormous, career-defining, people-impacting questions. I appreciate this; I've always been partial to deep reflective thought. These topics are crucial to practicing as a psychotherapist, and, above all, I care about the clients I will be working with.
Psychopathology, for example. For me to practice as a psychotherapist, I must know, interact, and work in relation to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, better known as the DSM-5-TR.
what is the dsm-5?
.... it is the handbook used by health care professionals in the United States and much of the world as the authoritative guide to the diagnosis of mental disorders. DSM contains descriptions, symptoms and other criteria for diagnosing mental disorders. It provides a common language for clinicians to communicate about their patients and establishes consistent and reliable diagnoses that can be used in research on mental disorders. It also provides a common language for researchers to study the criteria for potential future revisions and to aid in the development of medications and other interventions.
While having a common language to speak about mental health, diagnoses, descriptions, and symptoms across multiple professions in multiple places is a very needed and positive thing, it is also a very complex situation. For many people, these diagnoses have been thrown around as damaging labels and dismissive categories by professionals. Equally, they have been used as subjective means of further entrenching some into a marginalized area of society simply because they don't look, act, or desire to function in a way society and money-makers think is normal.
It's a contentious topic with a wide variety of views and perspectives. I am grateful to be in the hands of professors who not only want to teach us the importance of the inner workings of being a psychotherapist but also have great care in how people are treated, and should be treated, by this profession. That matters a great deal to me.