Diagnosis
- Diagnosis is intended to act as a standard shorthand so professionals can communicate quickly and effectively about problems. Diagnosis is not meant to be used to marginalize people, or exclusively as a label.
- It is used to define conditions that respond to particular approaches or treatments.
- The handbook of psychological diagnoses is called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR or just DSM for short). It provides information on symptoms, how similar diagnoses differ from one another, how common the disorder is at any given time, the progress or course of the disorder, and any familial patterns. A brief version of the DSM is available online at BehaveNet® Clinical Capsules™.
The first time a therapist meets with a client, s/he does an intake interview. The goal of the intake is to gather information on the client's presenting problem and develop a preliminary diagnosis.
As part of her intake write up for the client's file, the therapist has to make a preliminary diagnosis. Psychology's diagnostic coding system relies on diagnostic axes. Each of the five axes holds a different kind of information.
This write up is not for a real person. It was written for a character in an old scifi anime series called Gatchaman. (My Gatch Site 
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