Forcing patients into a single diagnosis drives inappropriate drug treatment.

Evidence

To its credit, the DSM has slowly recognized that the mutually exclusive and exhaustive rules just do not work. Just like Geddes, when applying the rules in practice—the DSM is very much oriented toward practitioners—one finds that in the real world, people have multiple disorders at the same time and the boundaries between having the disorder and not having it are often not clear. … It probably is best for the patient if the doctor admits that the patient does not fit neatly into any one category. This would be better than trying to force patients into some diagnosis, with potentially significant drug treatment issues, that are not appropriate for them. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts and Measurement, 1339

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors the reader’s notes on medical dismissals of women’s pain masking underlying disease — diagnostic categories shape what clinicians can think, and thus what gets treated.