Original SDMB thread - Schizophrenia
Rowan:
quote:
You know what just occurred to me? The diagnosis of schizophrenia is made mostly on the basis of the patient's behavior
Yes, and welcome to my (our) nightmare! (I have been so diagnosed).
Does schizophrenia exist, in the same sense that, let's say, cerebral palsy exists? Or is it more akin to a diagnosis of "hysteria", or "stress"? There is no test for it; it exists wherever the psychiatric professional sees it. The inter-rater reliability (the ability in blind tests for subsequent psychiatric diagnosticians to arrive at the same diagnosis after interviewing the same potential patient) is no better than random chance. The profession's declarations regarding the cause or etiology of schizophrenia never clarify previous declarations as more data becomes available, but instead contradicts the wisdom of previous articles. What used to be the result of dopamine receptor hypersensitivity is now understood to be related to serotonin uptake, although the statements issued in the 80s regarding dopamine were released as if with final clinical authority. If truth be known, no other branch of medicine, let alone science, could get away with the fuzzily defined variables and assumptions that permeate clinical psychiatry.
See my next post on this same thread