About the MiniDSM-5 and its mission

The MiniDSM-5 is an artificial intelligence chatbot that was developed using the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR) as its primary knowledge base. The DSM-5-TR (published in 2022) is the latest revision of the APA's official text outlining the standardized classification of mental disorders and their treatments. It is the primary text that is referenced by psychiatrists and clinical psychologists in the United States when diagnosing mental disorders and providing treatments for them.

The MiniDSM-5 aims to be a version of the DSM-5-TR that is easily accessible and understandable to the common individual, in order that it may accomplish two primary goals: 1) to comprehensively educate users (whether they be students or merely curious individuals) on mental disorders and their treatments in order to raise awareness of them, and 2) to provide potential rough diagnoses to users who believe that they may be exhibiting symptoms of a mental disorder, which can serve as a pre-screening that redirects the user to receive an official diagnosis from a professional and get treated accordingly. These two goals encompass the primary purpose of benefiting public mental health and advancing the field of clinical psychology.

In a time of increasing prevalence of the internet and social media in conjunction with worldwide declines in mental health, we believe it is absolutely essential that we use such platforms, which such a large portion of society has access and exposure to, as an outlet to promote the awareness of mental disorders as well as to reach out to concerned individuals to provide help. We hope to allow individuals to have easier access to means by which they are able to better understand their own mental condition, so that they may know to seek professional help. We believe that this in turn could help advance the dissemination of clinical-psychological care to more members of society as needed and reduce the number of unreported and (more importantly) untreated mental disorders. In addition to this, we believe that the MiniDSM-5 also serves as a tool that demonstrates and showcases the power and potential implications that AI holds for the field of clinical psychology.

However, it is important for the user to note that the MiniDSM-5 is neither affiliated nor approved by the APA, but was developed by a student. Potential diagnoses provided by the MiniDSM-5 are never official, and are subject to error due to the subjectivity surrounding mental disorders that only a professional can discern as well as the potential inaccuracies of artificial intelligence. The MiniDSM-5 does not in any way intend to be an authority that provides official diagnoses, but is merely a tool that can be used to suggest possible conditions and direct users to professional help, while serving as an experimental representation of the potential of AI in clinical psychology.