Overdiagnosis of Bipolar Disorder
A study conducted at the Brown University School of Medicine, in the state of Rhode Island, suggests that about 50% of diagnosed cases of Bipolar Disorder could be wrong.
Overdiagnosis of Bipolar Disorder
This report is one of the latest to have emerged at Brown University, in the United States, with the aim of optimizing the diagnostic evaluation, and represents a common front of collaboration between academic researchers and health personnel in the psychiatric field. The study was conducted based on interviews taken from 800 psychiatric patients using a comprehensive diagnostic test the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM Disorders. Respondents also responded to a questionnaire in which they had to specify whether they had been diagnosed with Bipolar disorder or with Manic-Depressive Disorder.
146 of those patients indicated that they had been previously diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. However, the researchers found that only 64 of the patients had Bipolar Disorder based on their own diagnoses using the SCID test.
Controversy: overdiagnosis under magnifying glass
The investigators shuffle some explanatory hypotheses before these surprising results that suggest an excessive diagnosis of cases of Bipolar Disorder. Between them, it is speculated that specialists are more likely to diagnose TB than other more stigmatizing disorders and for which there is no clear treatment. Another explanatory theory attributes responsibility for overdiagnosis to aggressive advertising of drugs used in treatment by pharmaceutical companies. Many professionals and scientists have recently highlighted that the ADHD it could also be being overdiagnosed.
Researchers insist on the need to use standardized and validated methods such as SCID to obtain reliable diagnoses.
Bibliographic references:
- Zimmerman M., (2008) Is Bipolar Disorder Overdiagnosed? Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.
