Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM): Class 502

Substance Use Disorder
Name
Institution
The use of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) is helpful in the diagnosis and assessment of patients with substance disorder issues. The counselors ought to be cautious, careful, methodical and slow in the diagnosis process in order to determine the severity of a substance disorder CITATION Jac13 \l 1033 (Klott, 2013). The counselor needs to discover the person and the reasons driving the person to seek therapy. Thus, perform screening tests such as mental exams, mood disorders or emotional disorders (Kennson et al.,2013). The severity of a disorder varies largely due to varying causative factors. All behaviors tend to be purposeful and different circumstances drive people to substance abuse. The assessment instruments for counselors to utilize to obtain the severity of a disorder include addiction severity index, structured clinical interview for DSM-IV, composite international diagnostic interview semi-structured assessment for drug dependence and alcoholism among others (Samet et al., 2007). Treating the person rather than the diagnosi...