Something relevant and important is rarely talked about by those in this profession. Any given diagnosis by a mental health work has a good chance of being completely wrong.
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Nevertheless, diagnosis and treatment for people with this diagnosis are inadequate. Psychiatrists have a hard time agreeing on who does and does not have major depressive disorder: the field trials for DSM-5 demonstrated an intraclass kappa of 0.28.2 This represents a value of ‘minimal agreement’, and means that highly trained specialist psychiatrists under study conditions were only able to agree that a patient has depression between 4 and 15% of the time.2,3 Once patients are diagnosed, few receive evidence-based care4 and those who do have a relatively low chance of recovery due to treatment.
High heterogeneity and low reliability in the diagnosis of major depression will impair the development of new drugs
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Less than 15% of the time did highly-trained psychiatrists agree on a diagnosis of major depression!
So please take the diagnosis as a reflection of this and not about your degree of impairment. Some of this disagreement, I believe, is due to gap between researchers and practicing clinicians which seems to be common in many fields and leads to harm to those needing treatment and huge waste of resources. This is why I shake my head when people write in an ask about symptoms and get canned answers "only a mental health professional can diagnose you". It is a ridiculous statement given the context.
Given all this, the rational thing to do is self-research. Ok, well I have become very jaded and very skeptical about any research these days having worked on all sides. My own conclusion is that self-diagnosis can be much more accurate. Outside of my long-term therapists, I think I can more accurately diagnose myself than most mental health people. Overall that's why I stress the importance of learning all you can and coming up with your own conclusions, if possible. By the time I found this out, it was too late. Had I taught myself earlier instead of listening to those who are supposed to be experts, I could have shaped a better outcome for myself.
I hope this helps.
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