http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/health/04psych.html?ref=health
I apologize for not sending out my class assignment where I have students scrutinize case studies for examples of potential errors in diagnoses. I'm not a clinician and, though this is a fairly casual and interesting activity, I became concerned that I might be criticized by clinicians and so have backed off my original decision to share it. Just found myself becoming too self-conscious about the activity, which is probably a good thing as I'm tuning it up. However, this article in the NYT's is an excellent example of how diagnosing has to have error factors as this type of incredible increase in bi-polar illness within the last few decades simply isn't credible, is it? I began to note a significant increase in the number of my students coming to me saying that they had been diagnosed with this illness when the label was changed from manic-depressive to bi-polar. The folks writing the DSM had the best of intentions but I suspect that by changing the label, the diagnosis now "sounded" less serious. An unintentional by-product could be that therapists have become more willing and more comfortable to give this diagnosis to their clients. This is simply an opinion from a non-clinician but have found a number of my clinician friends agree with this possibility. Whatever, when discussing the DSM, I feel it's articles like the one pasted above is a classic in demonstrating how the diagnostic process is not a hard and sound process but one to be used with great care and viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism. Joan Joan Warmbold Boggs [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
