Earlier this year I wrote about what seems to have become an epidemic of over-diagnosis such that what was considered normal and expected a couple of decades ago is now seen as a precursor of a serious physical illness.
Apparently, mental health professionals also have a problem related to diagnosing patients. This could be called under-diagnosis in that professionals are too quick to assign a cause to a problem, a cause that has a name (such as ADD) and one that can supposedly be treated by drugs. In today's Boston Globe, Stephen Schlein inveighs against the tendency "to slap a diagnosis on someone before we have any real personal in-depth understanding".
He cites two high-profile cases in the Boston area. In one case a child was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of 2. In the other, a stabbing is a high school was ascribed to the fact that the stabber had Asperger's Syndrome, which bears no relation to violence. He blames these diagnoses on an 'obsession with diagnostic labels'.
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