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OCD: Beware Misdiagnosis

BY Sean McElligott
February 27, 2014

Diagnosing a mental health patient with a precise clinical disorder can be a difficult undertaking, and some types of mental disorders are particularly easily confused with others. In most situations, allowing concurrent diagnoses of different clinical disorders ' and even being generally over-inclusive in identifying a patient's different disorders ' is not harmful to the patient. In the case of the diagnosis of “obsessive compulsive disorder” (OCD), however, a misdiagnosis may send the patient down the wrong treatment path entirely. Such misdiagnoses can be particularly prevalent where OCD patients are abusing substances in an effort to self-medicate. But no matter the difficulties, misdiagnosed patients may have a viable claim for medical malpractice, so knowing the common diagnostic pitfalls is helpful.

Making the Diagnosis

There is a description of each type of clinical disorder in the DSM V, the most recently released version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used by psychiatrists to diagnose clinical disorders. Unfortunately, many of the disorders have overlapping criteria. In fact, the manual states that “there is no assumption each category of mental disorder is a completely discrete entity with absolute boundaries.”

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