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Full-Text Articles in Social Work
Dsm-5: The Delayed Demise Of Descriptive Diagnosis, Tomi Gomory
Dsm-5: The Delayed Demise Of Descriptive Diagnosis, Tomi Gomory
Tomi Gomory
In 1980, DSM-III adopted a descriptive approach to psychiatric diagnosis, creating checklists of unwanted behaviors to define and use as required criteria when posing each of several hundred diagnoses. The objective of this novel approach was to validate psychiatry as a scientifically legitimate branch of medicine, by enabling research into hopefully homogeneous groups of patients to pinpoint the implicit hypothesized physiological causes of the disorders the patients were presumably sharing. In each subsequent revision of the DSM including the DSM-5, however, no physiological criteria of any sort are included for any diagnosis, confirming the empirical failure of this attempt to …
Social Work Practice In The Real World: An Argument For Evidence Tested Practice, Tomi Gomory
Social Work Practice In The Real World: An Argument For Evidence Tested Practice, Tomi Gomory
Tomi Gomory
This chapter explores the relevance of practice guidelines for the advancement of clinical social work by attempting to explicate the current epistemology of empirical social work practice, Justificationism, and contrasting it with an alternate epistemology, Fallibilism (Karl Popper’s Critical Rationalism). The chapter asserts the superiority of fallibilism for the advancement of knowledge and recommends its implementation. It is further argued that whether or not clinical practice guidelines are essential to practice depends on whether guidelines can be more explanatory (helpful) than some other alternative such as Falibilitic Critical Thinking (Fa.C.T.) when critically assessed against it. Examples and arguments are offered …
Programs Of Assertive Community Treatment (Pact): A Critical Review, Tomi Gomory
Programs Of Assertive Community Treatment (Pact): A Critical Review, Tomi Gomory
Tomi Gomory
Advocates of Programs of Assertive Community Treatment (PACT) make numerous claims for this intensive intervention program, including reduced hospitalization, overall cost, and clinical symptomatology, and increased client satisfaction, and vocational and social functioning. However, a reanalysis of the controlled experimental research finds no empirical support for any of these claims. Instead, there is evidence that the program is both coercive and potentially harmful. The current promotion of PACT appears to be based more on professional enthusiasm for the medical model than upon any benefit to the clients.