Presented by: Nancy McWilliams, PhD
Dr. McWilliams will reflect on contemporary diagnostic conventions in mental health, emphasizing the unintended negative consequences for both patients and clinicians of diagnostic practices that focus solely on symptoms and observable behaviors. She will describe alternative taxonomies intended to remedy the weaknesses of the DSM and ICD for guiding treatment, and she will mention other efforts to pursue a diagnostic sensibility that privileges inference, dimensionality, context, and meaning. She will discuss the new edition of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual, focusing on its relevance to contemporary clinical practice.