Source: psychologytoday.com | Repost Duerson Fund 6/27/2022 –
In the lead-up to the release of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) in 2013, field trials were conducted in real-world settings to essentially see how useful this bible for mental health clinicians was in producing valid, reliable diagnoses.
For each major mental health diagnosis (e.g., schizophrenia, PTSD, alcohol use disorder, etc.), a score was calculated for inter-rater reliability—how much two clinicians agree with one another that a person has a certain diagnosis.
You would think it would be fairly obvious if someone is depressed, right? Wrong. Highly trained psychiatrists who independently evaluated an individual could only agree that the person had depression between 4 and 15 percent of the time.
The inter-rater reliability score also fell in this ‘questionable’ range of 4 to 5 percent (the possible ranges being ‘very good,’ ‘good,’ ‘questionable,’ and ‘unacceptable’) for diagnoses of generalized anxiety disorder, mild traumatic brain injury, and antisocial personality disorder.
Let’s think about this: Based on these findings, if you are diagnosed with depression by a clinician using the DSM-5, there is an 85 to 96 percent chance that if you went to a second clinician, they might not diagnose you with depression (with a 4 to 15 percent chance that they would).