Posted by Larry Hoover on August 27, 2003, at 14:06:00
In reply to A poll for everyone... out of curiosity., posted by Ame Sans Vie on August 26, 2003, at 9:51:45
> I'm just curious to know what all of your opinions are about one particular thing. Which do you believe is more important in treating psychiatric patients -- accurate diagnoses (labels) or individual symptoms? I'll post my opinions concerning this after I absorb some of y'all's (oh boy... 8 years and TX and now the dialect is creeping up on me, lol) wisdom and insight. Oh, and of course "both" is an acceptable answer. :-)
Well if diagnosis could ever be accurate, it would save a lot of problems. When I go to a doctor, I go because of symptoms, not because I'm looking for a diagnosis. A diagnosis is a tool for doctors, and may not even be in the patient's best interests. The standard paradigm is:
SX --> DX --> TX --> PX?
What I was trying to represent is the following:
1. A patient presents with symptoms (SX).
2. A doctor selects the important ones (many may be irrelevant, at least to the doctor}, and comes to a diagnosis(DX).
3. The diagnosis (!) informs the treatment(TX). In other words, there's now a disconnect from the symptoms, but that wouldn't matter if the diagnosis is 100% accurate.
4. The prognosis (PX) is suggested by the TX, but we all know how much of a crapshoot that is.So, treating the symptoms is the only approach that is truly in the patient's best interests, IMHO.
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:254283
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030823/msgs/254742.html