It is not that I don't take the DSM IV seriously... it is just that I was in the mental health field (back when it was the DSM III) and before I went into engineering.

The ONLY time a therapist or a psychiatrist pulled out the DSM was to get the approved code for a patient to make sure their insurance would pay for hospitalization or sessions. In the academic world, it was pulled out to classify a subject into the right bucket for statistical analysis.

It DOES have a good broad brush of what the various basic disorders are - classes and such.

If you are an MD (psychiatrist with prescription drug privileges), you can get an idea as to what drugs to give.

But, if you are a therapist, you still have to do the work to devlop a relationship and work through the issues.

Psychosis is one of those things that requires drugs and then therapy. Very often, the therapy ends up centered around how to live with the drugs.

Then, you have drugs to counteract the side effects of the anti-psychotic drugs - like Haldol as an anti-psychotic and Cognetin for the EPS (side effects). Problem is, the side effect drugs can often produce psychosis too.

Qi Gong Psychosis -- then TCM ideas....this can get really messy since you would be using a western diagnosis modality and then switching to a TCM treatment modality...and they rarely map easily.