Medical Errors Update: DSM-5 Resources for Differential Diagnosis

Course overview

Decades of research suggest that misdiagnosis of mental disorders is a common medical error. For example, individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder are often misdiagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, and many children and adolescents are misdiagnosed with ADHD. Although many people who meet the diagnostic criteria for Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) are undiagnosed, as many as 60 % of people who are diagnosed with MDD do not meet criteria for the disorder! Bipolar II Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, specific phobias, PTSD, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, OCD, eating disorders, Intermittent Explosive Disorder, and Body Dysmorphic Disorder are often missed by clinicians. Why is that? We're often trained in graduate school to with cookie-cutter, seamless case examples, but in the real world, clients often don't present with "textbook" presentations of symptoms that neatly fall into a particular disorder. Many symptoms of mental disorders are "overlapping" meaning that the same symptom may be listed under several disorders. With the limited time that clinicians often have, how do we quickly formulate an accurate diagnosis? Find out by attending this 2-hour medical errors update! We'll use real case examples to show you how to use differential diagnosis resources for overlapping symptoms.