Teaching about mental health and illness through the history of the DSM

Most students enter introductory or abnormal psychology courses with a naively realist concept of what constitutes mental illness, and most textbooks do little to complicate this understanding. The tendency to reify the various diagnostic categories of the mental health disciplines into stable and independent illnesses is ever present. However, a critical review of the development of successive versions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) can help instructors demonstrate the evolving ways in which mental health and illness are conceptualized and can reveal the cultural, political, and economic forces that shape this process. This article provides a brief general review of this history, along with useful pedagogical questions and suggestions for integrating this material into the classroom. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).