Specifiers for Depressive Disorders
Suicidality represents a critical concern in psychiatry. Thus, the clinician is given guidance on assessment
of suicidal thinking, plans, and the presence of other risk factors in order to make a determination
of the prominence of suicide prevention in treatment planning for a given individual. A new specifier to
indicate the presence of mixed symptoms has been added across both the bipolar and the depressive
disorders, allowing for the possibility of manic features in individuals with a diagnosis of unipolar depression.
A substantial body of research conducted over the last two decades points to the importance
of anxiety as relevant to prognosis and treatment decision making. The “with anxious distress” specifier
gives the clinician an opportunity to rate the severity of anxious distress in all individuals with bipolar or
depressive disorders.