I am not a Doctor, why do I diagnose myself?

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• Category Self Diagnosis

• Mar 30, 2018 23:19

In this day and age of limited time with doctors coupled with ample opportunity to google anything, the temptation for people to reach their own conclusions about their illness is strong.   Self-diagnosis is dangerous, you dont know as much as you think that you do. Here are a few truths to consider and how self-diagnosis affects this.

When you self-diagnose, you are essentially assuming that you know the subtleties that diagnosis constitutes. This can be very dangerous, as people who assume that they can understand what is going on with themselves may miss the specific nuances of diagnosis. For example, people with mood swings often think that they have manic-depressive illness or bipolar disorder. However, mood swings are a symptom that can be a part of many different clinical scenarios: borderline personality disorder and major depression being two examples of other diagnoses. The clinician can help you discern whether you swing from normal to down or down to up, and by considering how long the mood swings last, the clinician can make the appropriate diagnosis. Here, the danger is that you may misdirect the clinician or even yourself.

One of the greatest dangers of self diagnosis in psychological syndromes, is that you may miss a medical disease that masquerades as a psychiatric syndrome. Thus, if you have panic attack, you may miss the diagnosis of hyperthyroidism or an irregular heart beat. Even more serious is the fact that some brain tumors may present with changes in personality or even depression. If you assume you have depression and treat it with an over-the-counter preparation, you may completely miss a medical syndrome. Even if you do not want conventional treatment for depression, you may want conventional treatment for a brain tumor.

Self-diagnosis commonly leads to over use of antibiotics which can lead to resistant illnesses. The pharmaceudical companies understand and depend on the growing self diagnosis issue and it's why you see so many commercials for medicine on tv, they want you to tell the doctor what you want.  How often do you hear thing in commercials like tell your doctor or ask for it by name...

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