1) Sociocultural theorists believe that abnormal behavior is rooted in social ills such as poverty, discrimination, and social stressors, not in the individual. The leading interactionist model, the diathesis-stress model, posits that some people have a predisposition (diathesis) for particular disorders, but whether these disorders actually develop depends on the type and severity of the stressors they experience. What are your thoughts here? Are environmental and sociocultural factors important in disease development?
“What's the use of their having names,” the Gnat said, “If they won't answer to them?” “No use to them,” said Alice, “but it’s useful to the people that name them, I suppose.” (Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass).

So begins Kirk and Kutchins’ The Selling of DSM: The Rhetoric of Science in Psychiatry (1992, NY: Walter de Gruyter, Inc.). This account of the political and social implications of the revisions of “the new bible” (DSM) includes a provocative discussion of uses for diagnosis other than the traditional ones such as planning treatment, discussed at more length in the textbook.

Some disapprove of diagnosis altogether, feeling it can be used or misused in a number of ways. See what you can identify and assess of nontreatment applications of diagnosis,
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