AMA Guides® Newsletter - Issue Archive

Articles

1. Assessing Mental and Behavioral Disorder Impairment: Overview of Sixth Edition Approaches

   Norma Leclair, Steve Leclair, Robert Barth

   Pages 1–7

   DOI: 10.1001/amaguidesnewsletters.2008.NovDec01

   Abstract

   Chapter 14, Mental and Behavioral Disorders, in the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment (AMA Guides), Sixth Edition, defines a process for assessing permanent impairment, including providing numeric ratings, for persons with specific mental and behavioral disorders. These mental disorders are limited to mood disorders, anxiety disorders, and psychotic disorders, and this chapter focuses on the evaluation of brain functioning and its effects on behavior in the absence of evident traumatic or disease-related objective central nervous system damage. This article poses and answers questions about the sixth edition. For example, this is the first since the second edition (1984) that provides a numeric impairment rating, and this edition establishes a standard, uniform template to translate human trauma or disease into a percentage of whole person impairment. Persons who conduct independent mental and behavioral evaluation using this chapter should be trained in psychiatry or psychology; other users should be experienced in psychiatric or psychological evaluations and should have expertise in the diagnosis and treatment of mental and behavioral disorders. The critical first step in determining a mental or behavioral impairment rating is to document the existence of a definitive diagnosis based on the current edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The article also enumerates the psychiatric disorders that are considered ratable in the sixth edition, addresses use of the sixth edition during independent medical evaluations, and answers additional questions.
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2. Commentary

   Richard T. Katz

   Pages 8–8

   DOI: 10.1001/amaguidesnewsletters.2008.NovDec02

   Abstract

   The author, who is the editor of the Mental and Behavioral Disorders chapter of the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment (AMA Guides), Sixth Edition, comments on the previous article, Assessing Mental and Behavioral Disorder Impairment: Overview of Sixth Edition Approaches in this issue of The Guides Newsletter. The new Mental and Behavioral Disorders (M&BD) chapter, like others in the AMA Guides, is a consensus opinion of many authors and thus reflects diverse points of view. Psychiatrists and psychologists continue to struggle with diagnostic taxonomies within the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, but anxiety, depression, and psychosis are three unequivocal areas of mental illness for which the sixth edition of the AMA Guides provides M&BD impairment rating. Two particular challenges faced the authors of the chapter: how could M&BD disorders be rated (and yet avoid an onslaught of attorney requests for an M&BD rating in conjunction with every physical impairment), and what should be the maximal impairment rating for a mental illness. The sixth edition uses three scales—the Psychiatric Impairment Rating Scale, the Global Assessment of Function, and the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale—after careful review of a wide variety of indices. The AMA Guides remains a work in progress, but the authors of the M&BD chapter have taken an important step toward providing a reasonable method for estimating impairment.
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