Table of Contents
For Students
Psychiatric classification attempts to bring order to the enormous diversity of mental symptoms, syndromes, and illnesses that are encountered in clinical practice. Epidemiology is the measurement of the prevalence, or frequency of occurrence, of these psychiatric disorders in different human populations. Diagnosis is the process of identifying an illness by studying its signs and symptoms and by considering the patient’s history. Much of this information is gathered by the mental health practitioner (e.g., psychiatrist, psychotherapist, psychologist, social worker, or counselor) during initial interviews with the patient, who describes the main complaints and symptoms and any past ones and briefly gives ...(100 of 23131 words)