Podcast: 1
DSM-1 and Diagnostic Uncertainties
“At other times, the diagnosis seems less relevant to the attending doctors than do their concerns over patient behavior, family relationships, and plans for discharge.”
Questions to Explore in this Podcast:
- In the mid-20th century, what criteria did American psychiatrists use to diagnose and treat signs of mental distress?
- To what extent did DSM-1 diagnostic criteria enter into actual diagnostic practice among hospital-based psychiatrists in the U.S. during the 1950s?
- What can we learn from psychiatrists’ narrative discussions of patients about how clinicians viewed patients, patients’ illnesses, and prognosis for recovery?
- Given limited available treatment options in the 1950s, how did staff at psychiatric hospitals approach patient care and discharge planning?
Episode Overview:
In this episode, we explore how psychiatrists and other staff at Morningside Hospital struggled to treat mental distress within the boundaries of standardized, diagnostic criteria. The first edition of the DSM – the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – was issued in 1954, solidifying efforts to treat mental disorders systematically through psychiatric medicine. However, psychiatrists practicing at Morningside engaged unevenly with DSM-1, at times using its criteria closely, at other times, only loosely referencing DSM diagnoses in their conversations about patient care. Drawing on our research with archival materials held in Special Collections and University Archives at the UO—namely, records of Morningside staff meetings from 1955-58 archived in the DeWitt Burkes collection—in this episode, we explore how the psychiatrists working at Morningside make sense of the mental distress presented by their patients.
Podcast music: “Varied Thrush” by Stephan Nance
