I read an article this week that compared diseases in psychiatry to diseases in other areas of medicine. The article pointed out that other medical specialties have medical-sounding words to describe many of their conditions. In other words, jargon. In psychiatry we treat "depression" and "anxiety", words that have every day meaning that is related (but NOT equivalent to) the illness. This creates a lot of confusion about what it means to be depressed versus suffering from Major Depressive Disorder as defined by the DSM IV.
This problem has only been made worse by the increased coverage of mental health in the media. Now people describe themselves as "having OCD"or "being ADD", or even "being Bipolar".
It's great that there is a growing awareness of the existence of these various conditions. The next step needs to be the recognition that these conditions are medical illnesses that are best treated by a doctor (and not the guy behind the counter at Vitamin Shoppe).
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