Psychology Lesson #1
If you are in the mental health profession, you will know this.
When diagnosing someone with a mental illness, they are assessed using five axes:
Axis I: This area includes clinical disorders–mood disorders, anxiety disorders, sexual and gender identity disorders, substance abuse, and, my favorite, Psychotic Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (NOS). A bit more on the NOS later. Pretty much everything besides mental retardation and personality disorders.
Axis II: Um…mental retardation and personality disorders. This area includes my all-time favorite: Borderline Personality Disorder…AHHH!
Axis III: General Medical Conditions. Basically, everything that is not mental health related.
Axis IV: This deals with psychosocial and environmental problems. For example, no support system (loser), educational problems (drop out), housing problems (not paying the rent because you spent it all on pot and porn), economic problems (haven’t received your George Bush money yet), etc. You know, stuff that is fucked up in your life.
Axis V: Global Assessment of Functioning or GAF. This is sort of the “lump all the axes together and give them a rating from 0-100 so you can see, very quickly, how fucked up they are.” This is basically the mental health equivalent of the GRE: “don’t worry about all their experience, let’s just reject him from grad school because his scores aren’t high enough.” Or, “forget what is all wrong with them. Their score is low. SHOCK ‘EM!”
More on the NOS. This is a specifier. It is tagged onto a diagnosis, like Schizophrenia Paranoid Type. ”Paranoid Type” being the specifier. Not Otherwise Specified is sort of a catch all term. For example, the “trash can” diagnosis of Psychotic Disorder NOS. People given this diagnosis exhibit symptoms of psychotic disorders but don’t have enough of the symptoms to have the actual diagnosis of schizophrenia or “with psychotic features” specifier. There is also a mood disorder NOS and personality disorder NOS. In my experience, these are the people who are trying to fleece the system and haven’t read a DSM to find out specifically what symptoms they need to fake.
So, at this point, you might be saying, “Brent, you silly homo! What do we need to know this for?” Well…
What some people don’t know is that there is actually an Axis VI: Asshole NOS. Yes! You will notice the NOS specifier. This means that they don’t meet the criteria for being diagnosed as Royal Asshole or Huge Asshole or Fucking Asshole. Sometimes people don’t have enough specific symptoms to get a specific asshole diagnosis. Instead, they have a conglomerate of symptoms that just make them an Asshole NOS.
I don’t think I need to enumerate the symptoms that give someone an Axis VI diagnosis. We have all experienced the asshole in society. The person who cuts in line, the person who drives 64 in a 65, or your parents when you ask them for money and they say no.
In the mental health profession, you will often hear “they are very axis II” or “they have some axis II going on.” You can also sound all smart and stuff by saying to the next asshole you encounter “Wow! You are way Axis VI.” I mean, you wouldn’t call someone a schizophrenic, you would say “a person with schizophrenia.” Likewise, you wouldn’t call someone an asshole, you would simply say “they are very axis VI.”
I hope you all enjoyed today’s lesson. And remember, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
April 9, 2008 at 5:55 am
hehe, love it! so true, too! I feel very enlightened now and starting tomorrow, I’ll be pointing out all the Axis VI people, that is, almost everyone else.
April 9, 2008 at 2:01 pm
That was funny and smart. Yay for you!