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by dragonwriter 3271 days ago
> Medically speaking, physical illness is different from mental illness. One is diagnosed from objective scientific tests (pathology) while the other is not.

Not all “physical” (the term is not really the correct distinction, since all illness, including mental illness, is physical) illness is diagnosed directly in that manner (not all physical illness can be, because not all is understood well enough to have definitive tests, and it's not always clinical practice to do so even when it is possible in principle.) And, on the other side, some psychiatric conditions have lab tests of the same sort available.
1 comments
wu-ikkyu 3271 days ago
>some psychiatric conditions have lab tests of the same sort available.

Which ones?

"psychiatric diagnosis still relies exclusively on fallible subjective judgments rather than objective biological tests" -Allen Frances

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Frances

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dragonwriter 3271 days ago
Schizophrenia had one on the market briefly, and there is one for bipolar disorder that is (or was, as of last year) in clinical trials.

See, e.g., http://www.thedailybeast.com/can-a-blood-test-diagnose-menta...

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wu-ikkyu 3271 days ago
Do you have a source for these claims? Because the DSM-5 says otherwise

>Diagnosis is based on observed behavior, the person's reported experiences, and reports of others familiar with the person...As of 2013 there is no objective test. [5]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia

Edit: the source you edited in simply states the corollary to what I've been saying all along: that scientists are still searching for a biological test for mental illness but as yet still do not have one

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