Autism Spectrum Disorder; Its Diagnosis, Therapy and Implications on Daily Life and Relationships

Autism Spectrum Disorder; its diagnosis, therapy and implications on daily life and relationships

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The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental Disorders (DSM) is a handbook that provides a standard classification of mental disorders and is used by clinicians, researchers, pharmacists, legal systems, physicians, policy makers and other mental health professional in the United States. It is also used for patient diagnosis, treatment of mental problems as well as gathering and disseminating crucial and accurate public health statistics. These mental disorders include: Depression, Schizophrenia, Mood disorders, Anxiety, opiates among others (American psychiatric Association, 2000).

The DSM traces its roots to the following sources: systems of collecting census, the statistics of psychiatric hospitals and the United States Army manual (Spitzer, 2002). The first form of DSM was published in 1952 by the American Psychiatric Association and has since been revised following the discovery, removal and modification of other mental disorders. The current version of DSM was published on the 18th of May 2013 and consists of three main components: diagnostic classification, diagnostic criteria sets and the descriptive text (Spitzer, 2002)

The DSM is based on a multidimensional approach in making assessments for diagnosis. This multi-axial approach allows health professionals to make comprehensive evaluation of a client's level of functioning, because mental illnesses often impact on different sectors of life. The various levels of assessments are grouped into 5 axials: Axial I, Axial II, Axial III, Axial IV and Axial V. This paper will look into the diagnosis of Autism spectrum Disorder (ASD).

ASD relies on behavior and development of children to make an early diagnosis. The physician conducts regular screening on the development process of the kid with regard to age and comparing with abilities of other kids of similar age. For instance, the doctor will test the learning, speech, play and general behavior of the child at certain interval by interacting with the child or cross examining both the child and the parents. Low birth weight, development delays, family member with ASD are among the key features that alert the mental professional for the conduct of a comprehensive diagnostic evaluation. These kind of evaluation incorporates hearing and vision testing, genetic screening, neurological tests among other tests to be done by specialists i.e. pediatricians, neurologists and psychiatrists.

The DSM handbook groups together all the closely related disorders on the basis of symptoms and treatment and labels them under one diagnostic code that is commonly used by institutions for data and billing (American Psychological