S4E164: Water Cooler Chat: DSM, ICD & WTF: How Diagnoses Actually Works

In this Water Cooler Chat, Nicole breaks down what it actually means to receive a mental health diagnosis—and why it’s about much more than checking boxes or assigning a billing code.

Using the Lindsay Clancy case as a backdrop, Nicole explores the DSM, ICD, differential diagnosis, and her three-legged stool of diagnostic criteria, the overall clinical picture, and clinical judgment. She also discusses why diagnoses can evolve as new information emerges and why one symptom—or one code—can never tell the whole story.

The takeaway: The DSM and ICD give clinicians a shared language, but the person is always bigger than the diagnosis.