Arts
Dr. B here starting my series on demystifying the DSM. So, the DSM is a book that we use to diagnose mental health conditions and there are several versions. We're on version 5 right now. It changes a little bit each time a new version comes out. I'm going to spend this year literally going through this and talking about how we treat these things here at Mentally STRONG And how to use cognitive behavioral thinking to grasp these disorders, right? Mental health is very different than other medical disorders in that there is a strong biological thing going on as well as a psychological thing going on when and psychological is influenced by your environment, your choices, and so it makes it unique in the way that we treat it. Because we really need you or the person who is struggling with these things to be on board in helping themselves, and that's what we do here at Mentally STRONG as we really try to empower you to help yourself. So, the 1st Chapter in the DSM is called neurodevelopmental disorders. These are evident in children. And it includes even things like intellectual disability Which can be mild, moderate, severe. I personally have two children with intellectual disability, and they had a disorder that was progressive, so they started off with a mild intellectual disability and towards the end of their life had their last IQ scores were In the 40s and 50s and so anything less than 70 is considered intellectual disability, so the average person has about 100 on the score of your intellectual capacity, so not everybody has taken this test. Usually if you have a child who you think is maybe a little slow. And you're concerned that their IQ is low. Uhm, usually somewhere around four or five. When they start school, the teachers or the pediatrician might notice and order what we call a neuro psych test and in that neuro psych test, they will do an IQ test to see you know. Is this child average in their ability to learn? So that's what IQ is. We don't need to know what everyone's IQ is. We know that the average is around 100. Anything lower than 70 is considered intellectually disabled, and they're going to need additional help to learn. It doesn't mean they can't learn, right? So how do we treat that here at Mentally STRONG? Well, there's not a specific treatment for intellectual disability. It's just modifying education and bringing that person up to their full potential. So if Intellectual disability is their only diagnosis. There's no other mood components. There's not behavioral components. Then likely they would not need to see a psychiatrist. They would just need, you know, help in school, accommodations with work as they become an adult. But oftentimes we see what we call comorbid when I use the word comorbid, I'm talking about there's more than one diagnosis. So here at Mentally STRONG we do treat people with intellectual disability, but they often have Comorbid mood disorders or Other things that we are treating. Depending on their level, sometimes cognitive behavioral therapy is very difficult because cognitive assumes that there is some Level of ability to abstract think and so we would have to assess if they really could do the complete Mentally STRONG method. But they still could do the behavioral part of the Mentally STRONG method, right? Anyone can learn new skills and so we do treat intellectual disability here. And you know, we want these individuals to come to their full potential. And so that is our Kind of roundabout. A way of talking about intellectual disability, but it is always in conjunction when we're treating it in the mental health setting. It's likely in conjunction