Mnemonics for DSM-IV psychiatric disorders: Part II

Abstract

Mnemonics are devices to aid memory, popular in medical education. They are of particular benefit in psychiatry, since use of an atheoretical framework, as in the current day psychiatric diagnostic criteria (e.g. the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, fourth edition (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) makes recall more difficult; it is unlikely this will change in the immediate next editions of DSM. While mnemonics have been published for earlier versions of DSM (Short et al., 1992), few have appeared in the literature for a broad range of DSM-IV disorders. In a previous paper (Keshavan, 2009), I provided mnemonics that pertain to general principles in psychiatric assessment. In this paper, mnemonics that cover the diagnoses and treatment of a wide range of DSM-IV psychiatric disorders are presented. Our goal is not to provide an account of the diagnostic features which are to be found in standard textbooks, but only to summarize the key points to remember as memory aids. The following mnemonics were developed largely by this author as an outcome of several years of experience in teaching psychiatry residents and medical students. These mnemonics are to be used as general guides and memory aids, and are not designed as a substitute for the published