An Ecological Model for Conceptual Competence in Psychiatric Diagnosis

Psychiatric diagnosis has come under intense scrutiny in the wake of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders–Fifth edition. These ongoing debates have highlighted the potential impacts of diagnosis on a client, technical issues in testing of diagnostic constructs, the role of institutional players in the codification of diagnoses, broader social and political concerns about the use of diagnoses, and contemporary debates concerning the relationship between the brain and individual experience, among other concerns. This article presents an ecological systems model to synthesize current debates and offers a framework for developing conceptual competence in psychiatric diagnosis.