Mental Health Industry

[Elisa]

I was reading an interesting article on the mental health industry and how we seem to have an increased need to label behavior, which has increased the number of "disorders" in the DSM from roughly 22 disorders in 1917 to the current number which is almost at 700. Children as young as 4 years old have been diagnosed with being bipolar, because they exhibit unruly moods swings (temper tantrums). At what point are we overdiagnosing?

[Buffy]

I'm not sure this is a bad thing. For one thing when "disorders" or "diseases" get split into differently named ones, it often also accompanies a recognition that not only the cause of the thing is different, but it requires a different treatment.

 

Psychology is still in its infancy compared to medicine in general, and in the 20th century we got to our first real advances in it comparable to when medicine moved away from a single diagnosis of "imbalance of humors" with a single treatment of "bleed the patient with leeches."

 

Now, over-diagnosis *is* a problem, but I don't think that the source of it is purely the *number* of identified disorders.

 

 

The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease, :phones:

Buffy

[Alex358]

Buffy, now you have me curious. What do you think is the cause of over diagnosis? I think it is a rampant issue and it worries me on many levels. Do you think it is a societal issue with needing to "make people better", if considered "ill"?

[Gregb]

I agree with Buffy. The DSM is pretty solid, but it's often psychologists are not up to snuff. Psychology and neuroscience are just at the beginning of being useful.

[Chemical]

I don't think it's a bad thing to have different mental issue categories split into smaller categories of disorders. I agree with Buffy; that means that we can get more focused on the real issue and treat it how  it should be treated.

[tscience]

These days moods swings is going a common trouble in human mostly in young generation, use of social networking websites and busy life has increased the stress & the daily life problems are turning into disorders. Yeas that is not a bad thing, categorization is important.

[Floppy]

These days moods swings is going a common trouble in human mostly in young generation, use of social networking websites and busy life has increased the stress & the daily life problems are turning into disorders. Yeas that is not a bad thing, categorization is important.

Hmmm I wouldn't say disorders can be caused by social networking sites, except for brain tumours if you use it too much, i suppose.

[Floppy]

 

I'm not sure this is a bad thing. For one thing when "disorders" or "diseases" get split into differently named ones, it often also accompanies a recognition that not only the cause of the thing is different, but it requires a different treatment.

 

Psychology is still in its infancy compared to medicine in general, and in the 20th century we got to our first real advances in it comparable to when medicine moved away from a single diagnosis of "imbalance of humors" with a single treatment of "bleed the patient with leeches."

 

Now, over-diagnosis *is* a problem, but I don't think that the source of it is purely the *number* of identified disorders.

 

 

The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease, :phones:

Buffy

 

Over-diagnosis dafuq? O.o

ah well,  tbh, i read somewhere (don't remember so can't state the source) that autism may actually be many disorders, rather than one as investigators have found that there are genes that are slightly different, and there are certain parts of the brain, not just one, that are deficient..