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Old Jul 18, 2019, 11:30 AM
ArtleyWilkins ArtleyWilkins is offline
Magnate
 
Member Since: Oct 2018
Location: USA
Posts: 2,818
Quote:
Originally Posted by hopealwayz View Post
I think I will tell him to just focus on treating the symptoms and then I will probably forget the label.
If you are willing to share the diagnosis, you might find people here who also share that diagnosis and perhaps can help you with some insight on it, but I understand if you are hesitant to do so.

The thing with psychiatric diagnoses is that a) they are a process of looking at a set of symptom criteria and deciding if a patient's symptoms check of the required number of boxes; b) they can and often do change over time as doctors get more familiar with us and/or our symptoms change; what once looked like X will start showing more as Y after more exposure to a patient's symptoms; c) most of the time, the diagnoses aren't as important in themselves as being sure whatever symptoms we are having trouble with get treated appropriately; however, d) the diagnosis can be important to medication options as some diagnoses can respond rather poorly to certain medication; e) they aren't necessarily "permanent" diagnoses; it is possible that symptoms can improve to a point that the diagnosis no longer applies.

In other words, much psychiatric diagnosis is rather fluid due to the diagnosis being based on observation and criteria vs. something like many medical diagnoses where specific tests basically "prove" the diagnosis. (FYI: Not even all medical diagnoses are "proveable" by testing; many medical diagnoses are also a process of elimination, observation, and lists of criteria; people with these kinds of difficult medical diagnoses go through very similar issues of diagnosis changes, treatment changes, etc. This isn't an issue reserved only for psychiatric diagnosis.)
Thanks for this!
precaryous