Pros and Cons in Classifying Mental Disorders

The main advantage of classifying different types of mental disorders as well the maintenance of such taxonomy in a clinical reference is the proper and right quality of treatment or diagnoses to be given on the patients. Though there are many types of mental disorders, still each of the mental disorders is different in nature.

This means that treatment may be specific for the different kind of mental disorders. It is very important for a physician to determine the right kind of treatment so that the welfare of the patient will not be sacrificed.This will improve the diagnosis program for the patients experiencing mental and behavioral disorders. (Wundt, 1874) Also, the classification of mental disorders will include the possible cause and effects of each mental disorder.

With this, prevention in these kinds of illness or disorder can be achieved with proper information dissemination of the types of mental disorders. A good example of this scenario is the possible result of drinking alcoholic beverages that will result to mental disorders.The classification will prevent as well to guide people in dealing with this kind of problems. Though there are advantages in classifying mental disorders of patients, still there are also disadvantages in this system classification. Some disadvantage on the categorizing of mental disorder schemes is the cultural differences. This is because classification schemes on mental disorders may not apply to all cultures in the world.

Some psychologists believe that some factors that cause mental disorders are dependent on the culture and location of a society.This means that the factors to be considered in the source of mental disorders in western countries may be different on the eastern countries. This also means that there are different ways in diagnosing the mental disorders from different cultures. Thus there is a need in standardizing the classification of mental disorders so that physicians, and also people concern on mental and behavioral disorders can prevent and diagnose properly the said disorders.