Describe ways in which dysfunctional behaviours can be classified

The two classification systems which are used to classify dysfunctional behaviours are the ‘Diagnostic Statistics Manual’ (DSM-IV), which is used in America and the ‘International Classification of Disorders’ (ICD 10), which is used internationally.
The DSM-IV was compiled by over 1000 people and published the American Psychiatric Association to produce practical guide to clinical diagnoses. They classify dysfunctional behaviours using a multi-axial tool: Axis 1: clinical disorders e.g. alcohol abuse; Axis 2: personality disorders e.g. histrionic; Axis 3: physical disorders e.g. cancers effect on the patient’s mood; Axis 4: psychosocial or environmental factors e.g. stressful life events such as divorce and Axis 5: global assessment of the patients functioning which is assessed on scale from 1 – 100. The DSM-IV has classifications such as learning disorders, communication disorders, dementia, sleep disorders etc.
The ICD 10 was published by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and is used to diagnose physical and mental disorders and allows psychiatric diagnosis across cultures. ICD 10 is used to measure general incidence and prevalence of mental and physical health problems. Each disorder is listen in one of 100 categories. Medical conditions are covered in the first category and the causal factors for dysfunctional behaviours are built into the groupings i.e. organic cause, substance abuse and stress. There are 9 categories of mental health disorders which include: Organic, substance related, schizophrenia, delusional, mood disorders, stress related, neurotic, behavioural syndromes and disorders of adult personality. The diagnosis of the disorder can be described as ‘confident’ but if there are some ambiguities it is described as ’tentative’, each disorder is then given code from A00 - Z99.
ICD and DSM offer slightly different purposes as the ICD 10 lists key information related to disorders such as age of onset, prevalence etc. Whereas the DSM-IV is a specific classification tool which allows an accurate diagnosis.