Profile of Mental Functioning. M Axis

This chapter describes 12 categories of basic mental functions that can help clinicians capture the complexity and individuality of each patient. The authors provide descriptions of different levels of psychological functioning and adaptation, ranging from more compromised to more functional, along with descriptors that allow a clinician to rate a patient in each capacity. Clinical utility demands that both adaptive and maladaptive functioning be taken into account in order to plan the most effective and well-rounded therapeutic interventions, anticipate challenges that may arise during treatment, delineate therapeutic goals, and evaluate treatment progress

What do practitioners consider the most helpful personality taxa in understanding their patients?

Background: The purpose of this study is to compare these results from the small sample of 61 expert psychodiagnosticians who rated the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual’s taxonomy with a much larger separate sample of typical mental health practitioners of varied theoretical orientations, training and experience. Sampling and Method: A sample of mental health practitioners from a wide range of educational backgrounds and theoretical orientations (N= 438) were asked to diagnose a recently seen patient and then rate the usefulness of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual’s taxonomy. Results: Our survey indicated that the percent rated as “helpful – very helpful” in understanding their patient for each diagnostic taxon were: Level of Personality Organization 75%, Personality Disorders 62%, Mental Functioning 67%, and Cultural/Contextual Dimension 41%. Only 30.5% rated Symptoms as “helpful-very helpful” in understanding their patient. All differences were statistically significant. Conclusions: These results suggest that our findings with expert practitioners are likely to be generalizable to most practitioners, i.e. that a useful taxonomy should include: Personality Organization (healthy, neurotic, borderline, psychotic), Personality Patterns and Disorders (ex: Schizoid, Histrionic, Narcissistic, etc.), and Mental Functioning (ex: Capacity for Intimacy, Defensive Level, Self Observing Capacity, etc.) in addition to a list of symptoms