Posted by Dinah on February 1, 2002, at 10:51:48
In reply to Axis I vs. Axis II, posted by Ponder on February 1, 2002, at 1:08:11
I'm not a mental health professional, so understand that I may not have this exactly right.
The DSM-IV suggests that diagnosis be made along 5 axes.
Axis I - "Mental" disorders such as mood disorders, anxiety disorders, thought disorders, substance abuse disorders, etc. I'm not sure if autistic disorders fall under this axis or not.
Axis II - "Personality" disorders are dysfunctional personality traits and ways of relating to others and coping with stress.
Axis III - Non-psychiatric medical conditions.
Axis IV - Sources of stress in your life. I suppose they put this one in to see if your condition might be a reaction to or at least exacerbated by factors in your environment.
Axis V - Global Assessment of Functioning measures the severity of your problems in terms of how much it affects your daily life. It is a measurement of that particular point in time.My humble opinion is that in many, if not most, cases an Axis II disorder is just a symptom that should be used to look for mood, anxiety, post traumatic stress, or others disorders or neurological problems. It is just plain lazy for a doctor to assign an Axis II disorder without looking darn hard for an underlying Axis I disorder. People cope the best they can and many people with "personality disorders" are just coping the best they can with an underlying mood disorder. However, Axis II diagnosis can be very helpful as a starting point in determing what dysfunctional ways of coping and which distortions in thinking should be addressed in therapy.
If I've got this wrong, I hope someone will correct my misperceptions.
Dinah
poster:Dinah
thread:91257
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020131/msgs/92502.html