Research work · 2015
Diagnosis in Psychiatry
Overdiagnosis in Psychiatry
Abstract
Diagnosis in psychiatry lacks precision because disorders have fuzzy boundaries with each other and with normality. Validity is problematic because diagnosis is entirely based on signs and symptoms; there are no biological markers for any of the major mental disorders. Clinicians can under-diagnose or overdiagnose disorders, but the problem of overdiagnosis is more prevalent and more problematic. At the present state of knowledge, psychiatry does not need hundreds of diagnoses, only a few of which have established validity. Overdiagnosis is an attempt to short-circuit a process of scientific discovery that will require many more decades of research.