Hello. Welcome to Psychopathology. I'm your instructor, Dr. Guitele Rahill. I have nearly 20 years experience as a licensed clinical social worker, and I have taught psychopathology using various versions of the DSM. We are currently going to use the DSM-5, which is a diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. 

The psychopathology course is part of the human behavior and social environment sequence. You will be using it as part of your long-term planning, treatment planning. Prior to actually developing a treatment plan, you need to establish a diagnosis that you will have based on the biopsychosocial and other information that you will gather from your client. We're going to keep in mind that we use the biopsychosocial as a tool and that the DSM-5 is used as a resource. You will be functioning with an interdisciplinary team, and so other persons will have something to contribute to the actual diagnosis. 

You will succeed in this course if you keep up with the assigned readings. I have also posted several videos for you to watch, and I've very carefully selected certain readings that will supplement what you're reading in the DSM-5. The most important thing I'd like you to take away from this course is how to develop an ethical diagnosis, because the ethics of diagnosis are very important. The client will remain with the label that you adhere to him or her, for instance, and so it's very important that you are very careful in coming up with the diagnosis and that you consider all factors, including cultural factors, and by culture, I mean religious and spirituality, as well as racial and ethnic factors. 

I have really enjoyed working as a practitioner, providing case management, community development, as well as clinical therapeutic services. I am now teaching the course, because I thought it was time to join some new minds, fresh minds, who are very eager to enjoy it as I have. So I really sincerely hope that you enjoy the course as I have and that your path in engaging your clients and developing rapport with them and in becoming an expert clinician, an evidence-based clinician, is just as enjoyable as mine has been.