Why does psychiatry need to have an ‘equivalent’ of a sprained ankle?
Most people recognise a sprained ankle, at least mild ones, as a self limiting illness. An issue with psychiatric diagnoses is that they are often not taken to be self limiting and often become a large part of a patients self image. While sometimes this can be helpful and help inform treatment it can also be harmful and I have seen this harm first hand in patients I see.
If there is no sprained ankle diagnostics and doctors just tell you to ignore not being well: just jump and run around as normal there is nothing seriously wrong.
And doctors only react when you can no longer use your legs for a year, otherwise they must be amputated.
Or would you rather have an earlier disgnostic with instructions to reduce extreme loads and try to take it easy. Let's check again in a week.
Most people recognise a sprained ankle, at least mild ones, as a self limiting illness. An issue with psychiatric diagnoses is that they are often not taken to be self limiting and often become a large part of a patients self image. While sometimes this can be helpful and help inform treatment it can also be harmful and I have seen this harm first hand in patients I see.