I was struck by something my registrar said the other day. We were discussing classification and relating some of the foolish categories in DSM to a particular patient’s situation she said: “there’s a diagnosis for that”. She was a bit puzzled when I laughed – not being aware of the Apple/iPhone/app store...
One of my most hated diagnoses is “drug-induced psychosis”. It’s not a diagnosis that I can particularly recall ever having made – despite seeing many many patients with drug use – and psychosis. This is a category which should hold people who do not have a psychiatric illness (like a schizophrenia or bipolar disorder...
I’ve previously expressed some of my disquiet about the diagnostic practice in psychiatry. I am really concerned that we are widening our notions of illness far too much, and beginning to include a lot of normal experience. How else can one interpret the statistic from the recent Australian National Mental Health Survey that proposed...
There’s a piece in New Scientist about the controversy surrounding the development of the DSM V – the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (5th edition). The article and an accompanying editorial make for very interesting reading. The DSM is one of the two major diagnostic manuals in use; the other is the ICD...
Midweek Medicine Redux Since I was off sick for Monday and Tuesday, today is midweek for me I thought I’d spend some time on the importance of regular review in psychiatry. I’m not (just) meaning clinical review of patients, or multi-disciplinary team reviews of management; I’m referring to the process of reviewing a...
