Posted by S.D. on July 17, 2000, at 15:48:13
In reply to Re: BROWN ATTENTION-ACTIVATION DISORDER (BAAD) SCALE, posted by noa on July 17, 2000, at 6:52:04
As has been said by various of us in this and other threads, certain symptoms cross boundaries between different disorders and even when we can make additional distinctions (like early-age onset for ADD), these don't necessarily indicate different courses of treatment.
The way I think of it, these diagnoses are just kinds of labels (and Dr. Brown's "AAD" was just a label he made up, as far as I know, and not a medical diagnosis at all.) And I evaluate a label, (or a suggestion or criticism in my life) by asking myself "does it suggest a course of action?".
I think a medical diagnosis is supposed to do so, by having a corrosponding established procedure or 'algorithm'. By this standard, some diagnoses don't seem to me to hold up very well.
A demonstration of that would be that any one of a number of psychiatric illnesses/disorders is sometimes successfully treated by drugs that are classified by using the name of a *different* diagnosis. For example an "Anti-Epileptic Drug" used as a mood-stabilizer to treat "Bipolar disorder", or an "antipsychotic" med used to treat "dysthymia".
peace and health,
S.D.
poster:S.D.
thread:40588
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000717/msgs/40761.html