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If your teen is having trouble concentrating, a therapist may want to rule outADHDor PTSD. Or, if your teen seems depressed, a mental health professional may want to rule out bipolar disorder before making a depressive disorder diagnosis.

Figuring Out the Right Diagnosis

Finding an accurate diagnosis fortroubled teenscan be difficult and initially several possible mental health disorders may seem to explain your teen’s emotional or behavioral problems.

Getting the right diagnosis is extremely important in order to be able to successfully treat your teen’s symptoms. It’s a mental health professional’s job to use different methods to figure out exactly which disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5) fits your teen best.

An Example of the Difficulty of Diagnosis

Defiant behavior may be a symptom of several conditions, such as oppositional defiant disorder, depression, or substance abuse. But a little defiance may not necessarily signal a mental health issue.

Oppositional behaviormay also stem from past trauma or learned behavior from an unhealthy group of friends. The mental health professional evaluating this teen is likely to say, “First we will rule out depression, then we will consider other possibilities.”

Steps Mental Health Professionals Use to Rule Out Diagnoses

Mental illnesses aren’t always cut and dried. Professionals don’t simply use a checklist to arrive at a diagnosis.

Instead, most conditions are diagnosed after a series of interviews where a clinician considers an individual’s background and environment.

This is important because symptoms need to be taken in context. For example, a teen who is misbehaving at school may be acting out because they have a learning disability or because they are bullied, not necessarily because they have a primary behavior disorder.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) Overview

How to Get Help For Your Teen

Your teen’s physician may make a referral to a therapist, psychiatrist, or other mental health professional. A thorough assessment andevaluationcan help a clinician rule out specific mental health conditions while also arriving at an accurate diagnosis if a diagnosis is warranted.

3 Sources

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

LeBano L.Six Steps to Better DSM-5 Differential Diagnosis. Psychiatry & Behavioral Learning Network.

Ghosh A, Ray A, Basu A.Oppositional defiant disorder: current insight.Psychol Res Behav Manag. 2017;10:353–367. Published 2017 Nov 29. doi:10.2147/PRBM.S120582

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