What is DSM and ICD?

The ICD is the official world classification. The
section concerned with psychiatric disorders is
called ‘Mental and Behavioural Disorders’. This
classification is used to record the diagnoses of all
patients seen in psychiatric care across the world
where official statistics are collected. By contrast,
the DSM is the official classification in the USA
for clinical diagnosis, although its influence
now covers the globe, particularly because of its
apparent advantages for research and the general
belief that it is in some way more accurate.

DSM is mainly used by psychiatrists, although it
is recognising that this is not entirely satisfactory
and is promoting its use among psychologists
and other mental health practitioners. ICD, on
the other hand, has always had in mind the
universal mental health practitioner.

DSM has been productive in promoting research,
but has handicapped advances in some respects by
giving credibility to diagnoses which probably do
not exist, and has generated much needless research into issues such as comorbidity of disorders which share much more than they differ by.
ICD has been poorly resourced and has not been
able to generate the same degree of research data
as DSM, but has steadily improved over the years
and, with better descriptions and definitions, is
likely to be used not only widely, but more seriously
and accurately.