Rating: 
Summary: It's the Mainstay
Review: I am a psychologist and I have been practicing for about 30 years. I remember the little DSM II. It was the size of the companion small book that can be purchased. The DSM has a history. There was actually a time when psychologists and psychiatrists were considering 2 different texts. Reading the reviewers was interesting as this is my tool to differentiate what my clients present. It is continually being improved and that is the focus of TR. There are subtle differences and clarifications. This book is the basis of identifying the specifics of what we are working with. The DSM IV was a collaborative effort to acurately represent international, cultural, and biological differences. My clients don't care but some don't know that an adjustment disorder of mood is different than dysthymia or depression which is again different from Bi Polar disorder. I probably wouldn't read it if I didn't do this kind of work. Yet it may be important to people with diagnosed illness. It can assist the capable reader in being an informed consumer.
Rating:
Summary: Necessary.
Review: I am currently in graduate school and it seems as though everyone and their grandmother hates the DSM! The reasons are legion. Suffice to say, this is "the book" that the field uses and it is the one we must become familiar with. I don't recall reading anywhere where the authors claimed this was the perfect way. The DSM makes no such claims. Yet I feel that the compilers have answered the critics regarding how mental health impairments are to be categorized. I plan on reading the comments made in this book regarding its compilation and its use because this is the way things are done, whether we like it or not. I guess if one feels strongly about the DSM, they should try to get a seat on the panel that authored the book.
Rating:
Summary: A good book
Review: I am not going to say much but this is a very informative and useful book for anyone in the field of social and human services. However, if you have the DSM 4 then you are pretty set, I got this one b/c I no longer have my DSM-4. The Axis codes are excellent and much has gone into making correct diagnosis instead of generalizing them. I acutal find this better than the DSM-4 because it seems to give more detail information on each mental illness- including disassocitive identity disorder AKA multiple personality disorder.
Rating:
Summary: Postpartum Disorders Reorganized
Review: I am pleased that postpartum psychosis has been dropped as a separate entry in the DSM IV TR. Postpartum is now correctly classified as a General Medical Condition. These changes call for the diagnostician to classify an afflicted mother by a disorder for which there is information more readily available, such as schizophrenia. In the case of a schizophrenic disorder, the mother is no more a danger to others (including the infant, I would infer) than those in the general population (p. 304). Therefore, mental health care providers have no basis to keep a mother separated from her infant any more than any normal parent. The manual is a useful tool for the afflicted to use for self-discovery, especially when there is mistrust, denial, anger, and agitation toward mental health care providers. The manual can literally put the afflicted and the provider "on the same page." It is well worth the investment in this book, a highlighter marker, and a therapy session to mark up and discuss the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Not the simple, useful nosology you're looking for.
Review: I quote Karl Menninger, on the publication of the DSM-II in 1968:
"This year [1968] the APA took a great step backward when it abandoned the principles used in the simple useful nosology [DSM-I]. In the interest of uniformity, in the interest of having some kind of international code of designation for different kinds of human troubles, in the interest of statistics and computers, the American medical scientists were asked to repudiate some of the advances they had made in conceptualization and in the designation of mental illness."
Since then, it's gotten worse, not better, with thousands of symptom checklists and numbered diagnoses, conveniently correlated to the ICD-9 standard diagnosis codes for easier billing.
But people, medical students and physicians included, will insist on treating DSM-IV as a textbook in psychiatry. It's nothing of the sort - it never touches on the essential topics of etiology, prognosis, and treatment. People memorize the checklists and think they understand psychiatry, when in fact they have entirely failed to grasp the noble and great endeavor: riddling out the first causes and mechanisms of our humanity, and how those mechanisms go awry.
Well, then, you say, what about diagnosis? Isn't this a diagnostic manual?
In my opinion, for that purpose DSM-IV is worse than useless to a lay person. Consider the previous reviewer who thought the book made a good party game, diagnosing his healthy friends with all sorts of 'disorders'. It wouldn't take much experience in a psychiatric emergency room to realize that psychiatric illness is no party game - but it would take some. Without the context provided by direct, caring relationships with the mentally ill, the jargon and symptoms discussed in this book are meaningless. This book will not teach you to be a psychiatric diagnostician! Only experience can do that. It's intended as a quick reference guide for people with that experience, and a reference concerned with very practical matters not relevant to the patient-physician relationship (such as the standardized conduct and reporting of clinical trials, or how to justify billled services).
I'd disagree strongly with the prior reviewer who felt psychiatric patients should read their DSM-IV. If you're a psychiatric patient "on the same page" as your health care practictioner, get off the page and get on top of your life! You have more pressing concerns than making yourself into an expert psychiatric diagnostician and quibbling over the learned APA's compilation of symptom checklists - you need to heal.
In short, I can't imagine recommending this tome to anyone for any purpose - people who need it don't need me to tell them so.
...
Rating:
Summary: Not the simple, useful nosology you're looking for.
Review: I quote Karl Menninger, on the publication of the DSM-II in 1968:
"This year [1968] the APA took a great step backward when it abandoned the principles used in the simple useful nosology [DSM-I]. In the interest of uniformity, in the interest of having some kind of international code of designation for different kinds of human troubles, in the interest of statistics and computers, the American medical scientists were asked to repudiate some of the advances they had made in conceptualization and in the designation of mental illness."
Since then, it's gotten worse, not better, with thousands of symptom checklists and numbered diagnoses, conveniently correlated to the ICD-9 standard diagnosis codes for easier billing.
But people, medical students and physicians included, will insist on treating DSM-IV as a textbook in psychiatry. It's nothing of the sort - it never touches on the essential topics of etiology, prognosis, and treatment. People memorize the checklists and think they understand psychiatry, when in fact they have entirely failed to grasp the noble and great endeavor: riddling out the first causes and mechanisms of our humanity, and how those mechanisms go awry.
Well, then, you say, what about diagnosis? Isn't this a diagnostic manual?
In my opinion, for that purpose DSM-IV is worse than useless to a lay person. Consider the previous reviewer who thought the book made a good party game, diagnosing his healthy friends with all sorts of 'disorders'. It wouldn't take much experience in a psychiatric emergency room to realize that psychiatric illness is no party game - but it would take some. Without the context provided by direct, caring relationships with the mentally ill, the jargon and symptoms discussed in this book are meaningless. This book will not teach you to be a psychiatric diagnostician! Only experience can do that. It's intended as a quick reference guide for people with that experience, and a reference concerned with very practical matters not relevant to the patient-physician relationship (such as the standardized conduct and reporting of clinical trials, or how to justify billled services).
I'd disagree strongly with the prior reviewer who felt psychiatric patients should read their DSM-IV. If you're a psychiatric patient "on the same page" as your health care practictioner, get off the page and get on top of your life! You have more pressing concerns than making yourself into an expert psychiatric diagnostician and quibbling over the learned APA's compilation of symptom checklists - you need to heal.
In short, I can't imagine recommending this tome to anyone for any purpose - people who need it don't need me to tell them so.
If you're interested, however, in psychiatry, I urge you to read the classics - Freud for the grounding of psychodynamics, Skinner on behaviorism, Menninger's superb "Man Against Himself" on suicide and depression, Erich Fromm's "Escape From Freedom" and "Man For Himself" for academic psychophilosophy, Kraepelin on dementia praecox (what we now call 'schizophrenia' - I prefer his original term), Wundt on introspective self-analysis, Kraft-Ebbing's "Psychopathia Sexualis" for a laugh and for a serious understanding of the social construction of sexual "disorder" - if you're really interested in these topics, you'll find these authors far more stimulating, I guarantee!
Rating:
Summary: I learned alot from this
Review: I'm a 3rd year undergrad student in neuroscience and I found DSM IV TR a useful tool for my studies. I would highly recomend it along with the case study paperback.
Rating: 
Summary: A great writing reference
Review: I'm not a psychologist, psychiatrist or even a counselor. Yes this book is huge. Yes this book is dry but so is a dictionary. As a writer I can tell you this is an amazing reference book for creating detailed descriptions of characters. When I create a character that has a specific symptom or disorder I can look it up in the book at get a very detailed description of specific conditions. This book helps me get into the mind of my characters and see them as more complete people. This is a must have for writers.
Rating:
Summary: keep your DSM IV
Review: If this is your first time purchasing the DSM, It will make a good paperweight, used intelligently, it is a very useful book....
Rating: 
Summary: Not for lay readers!
Review: If you are not a trained professional, you should not buy this book. If not used responsibly by truly qualified psychologists and psychiatrists, the information contained herein can be grossly and dangerously misinterpreted. Do not self-diagnose! Unlike medical dianoses, psychiatric diagnoses are not concrete, specific, and inflexible. Without a contextual understanding of individuals, their backgrounds, etc., psychiatric "diagnoses" are meaningless. If you concerned enough to invest the money in this book, your money will be better spent on an initial session of psychotherapy.
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