I always get troubled looks from psychiatry residents when I point out that our field is the domain of the uncertain and the not-well-understood — and that it will always remain so. As soon as the cause of a disease is known, it automatically leaves psychiatry for another specialty. General paresis (advanced syphilis), once identified […]
|
|
|
|
Earlier this year a reader asked me: “I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on patients becoming too focused on diagnoses. […] While I was in an RTC as a teenager, and recently in the hospital as an adult, I have found that people almost treat their diagnoses as a competition. I was […] Cross-posted from Technorati with permission. At a dinner meeting a couple of weeks ago I met two psychiatrists who work at Kaiser Permanente, the large HMO system that boasts a 24% health insurance market share in California. (This has nothing to do with my story really. I just think it’s amazing that a quarter of […] In my last post, I highlighted diagnostic challenges related to borderline personality disorder (BPD): Sometimes dramatic, self-destructive behavior leads to reflexive, inaccurate use of this label, while other times eagerness to diagnose a medication-responsive illness such as bipolar disorder can lead to overlooking BPD. Naturally, this barely scratches the surface. Thousands of books have been […] Just as I was formulating a few thoughts on borderline personality disorder (BPD), I see the NY Times beat me to it. Jane E. Brody’s 6/15/09 “Personal Health” column, “An Emotional Hair Trigger, Often Misread,” provides an evocative description of this vexing disorder. Brody’s column seems informed largely by her consultant, Dr. Marsha M. Linehan, […] Since psychiatric disability is often invisible and unquantifiable, considering oneself psychiatrically disabled can take on many meanings. Certainly there are those who assess their limitations, whether imposed by thought disorder, anxiety, or mood extremes, and accurately gauge themselves disabled. It is a strength to accept reality for what it is, to live one’s […] In my last post I discussed the politics of psychiatric nosology and the revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). While the machinations behind specific disorders are fascinating, it is easy to miss the forest for the trees. The basic idea of dividing mental distress and disability into diagnostic categories is […] |
 |