Good Old Fashioned Screw Job

[Hoppy]

I have been working on this claim for five months. The problem was that I could not find any old cases to show how the symptoms under the DSM II should have been diagnosed. The only place I know where to get a DSM II is at the bio-med library at UCLA. Then I would need to sit in the library and try to figure out things from diagnostic criteria that preceded my studies at UCLA. I was trained on the DSM III.

Low and behold I found what I needed this morning. However, what I also found is what a good job of cheating a veteran out of his benefits was perpetrated against the veteran I am helping. Technically a military psychiatrist overlooked making a diagnosis that should have been assigned to the symptoms reported in the SMR. Instead the psychiatrist thought he should address only the etiology of the symptoms. The psychiatrist said the symptoms were caused by an underlying PD.

The DSM II was junk in junk out. The diagnoses made under the psychodynamic criteria were the laughing stock of the entire intellectual community. Eventually, the DSM III totally changed the way the DSM worked. The assignment of etiology is no longer allowed under the DSM IV.

I found quite a few old and ongoing cases for what was called “hyperventilation disorder”. Hyperventilation disorder was service connected in the 70’s. I found cases where over the years the VA re-classified the hyperventilation disorder diagnosis to Panic Disorder.

The veteran had been to sick call with the same symptoms initially called hyperventilation episode on 20 occasions over a period of the next 16 months. Had the military shrink diagnosed this veterans condition on the discharge exam he would have had to call it a hyperventilation disorder. So instead he just did not make a diagnosis.

The DSM IV and some laws I found should get this SC’d.

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disability resulting from a mental disorder that is superimposed upon a personality disorder may be service connected. 38 C.F.R. § 4.127.

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DSM-I and DSM-II were widely criticized for a variety of reasons. …… Most importantly, the reliability and validity of the first two editions were challenged (Blashfield, 1998; Kirk and Kutchins, 1994). The diagnostic descriptions were not detailed, leaving lots of room for error. Additionally, the descriptions had been written by a small number of academics rather than empirical studies. Many psychiatrists criticized the implicit medical model, stating that it was inappropriate because the cause of most disorders was unknown.

In 1980, with DSM-III, the psychodynamic view was abandoned and the biomedical model became the primary approach, introducing a clear distinction between normal and abnormal. The DSM became atheoretical since it had no preferred etiology for mental disorders.

In 1987 the DSM-III-R appeared as a revision of DSM-III. Many criteria were changed. In 1994, it evolved into DSM-IV. This work is currently in its fourth edition.

Edited May 26, 2009 by Hoppy

[allan]

Good research Hoppy.

Thank you for helping this vet.