[epgui]

Oftentimes in psychiatry the treatments are just as important as anything else in establishing a diagnosis.

There’s a well-known concept of “diagnosis by treatment” because unfortunately that’s often the best we can do in practice. It sounds backwards, and yeah, it is backwards, but oftentimes it’s the best we’ve got.

At the same time you want treatments and clinical presentations to be somewhat coherent, and you don’t want practitioners going totally rogue and deviating from the standard of care in a way that could harm people, so yeah the conditions and their potential treatments are associated.

Most discussion of treatments in the DSM are various forms of therapy. Most pharmaceutical treatments that are mentioned are about broad classes of medications, and they’re all old drugs with generics on the market. It’s not a book you consult for pharma info.

[dotancohen]

I'm not disagreeing with anything you say, although I did not know the concept of diagnosis by treatment is actually formerly recognised. That is exactly why the DSM is a prescription tool, not merely a diagnostic tool as reading of the introductory text would have one believe.

[epgui]

I don't know that it's formally recognized, but it's a thing.