Misdiagnosis Research Paper

In noting the interesting ways in which misdiagnosis speckles into today’s society, it creates a compelling compilation of information about such’s implications in the world we live in. Within two subsets of MDD, unipolar depression, which characterizes intense sadness and worthlessness, and bipolar depression, which presents a combination of extreme highs and deep lows, there were three types of diagnosis that stood out amongst those found in other, minor research: genuine misdiagnosis, misdiagnosis due to patient circumstance, and even, interestingly enough, deliberate misdiagnosis. Within the existence of these realms, misdiagnosis creates problems within the systems in which they all come from, as considered in the articles individually. …show more content…
Misdiagnosis can be rooted deep within a patient’s environment and life events which, in turn, leads professionals to miss the diagnoses entirely. One circumstance leading to misdiagnosis is found in that of women with postpartum depression; the lack of research done to effectively rate it, combined with the commonly missed bipolarity in these patients depicts an idea of how the misdiagnosis comes about. “According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR) (11), the postpartum-onset specifier cannot be used to characterize postpartum hypomania even though euphoria and other features of hypomania are quite common in the early puerperium.” (Sharma). Even with qualifiers such as those, misdiagnosis is something not commonly looked into in these patients. Similar to the findings of genuine misdiagnosis, circumstantial misdiagnosis is detrimental to patients as well, as described by Sharma and collegues: “Failure to detect hypomania can result in the overdiagnosis of major depressive disorder at the expense of bipolar depression and consequently lead to the misuse of antidepressants.” Other circumstances in which misdiagnosis was discovered included the societal writing off of depressed elderly, claiming that their symptoms of depression are simply a part of aging, something the article Help for Depressed Elderly argues to de definitely false, and in the prevalent community of older long-term unemployed whose majority goes untreated as illustrated by Iris Liwowsky and her

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