DSM-5 Guidebook: The Essential Companion to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition

DSM-5 Guidebook: The Essential Companion to the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition is a user-friendly, supplementary
guide for psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health practitioners
who need to know how DSM-5 differs from its predecessor in terms of
organizational structure, diagnostic categories, and the criteria themselves.
While it does not replace the comprehensive and authoritative DSM-5, it
illuminates its content by teaching mental health professionals how to use the
revised diagnostic criteria and by providing a practical context for its
clinical use.

The book offers many valuable features, including:

An historical overview of the development of the DSM in general, and DSM-5 in
particular, a progression that might be said to mirror the evolution of
psychiatry as a whole. The material on the creation of DSM-5 includes coverage
of dimensional assessment, reliability and field trials, and the controversies
that arose during development of DSM-5. An indispensable chapter on how to use
DSM-5 that addresses coding, diagnostic certainty, the demise of the multiaxial
system, and the key changes to each diagnostic category. Full coverage of the
significant reorganization from DSM-IV-TR to DSM-5, which is designed to
incorporate advances in neuroscience, brain imaging and genetics. Chapters were
reordered to reflect scientific advances in the understanding of psychiatric
disorders, and the presumed etiological and the pathophysiological relationships
among them. Extensive coverage of the decision to integrate dimensional
measures into DSM-5, which may enhance the clinician's ability to assess symptom
variation and severity and aid in patient evaluation, treatment decisions, and
outcome monitoring. The various measures are presented and their use discussed.
Finally, as the authors were not part of the revision process, they offer a
fresh, down-to-earth perspective that will resonate with clinicians by focusing
on the changes that will most significantly impact clinicians' professional
lives.

DSM-5 Guidebook provides a roadmap to the many changes in this
living document, DSM-5, and will prove invaluable to psychiatrists,
psychologists, psychiatric nurses, neurologists, social workers, and all who
strive to understand mental illness as it is conceived today.