Posted by pegasus on April 27, 2009, at 13:37:17
In reply to axis two features, posted by deerock on April 27, 2009, at 12:32:18
A lot of therapists don't like to give diagnoses, because they don't really believe that our system of diagnosing mental disorders is accurate or helpful. Maybe that's why she was reluctant to tell you how your symptoms would be interpreted in that system.
People tend to look at mental diagnoses the same way they look at physical diagnoses, and they're really very different things. With physical diagnoses, they generally point to a particular physiological cause and mechanism for all of the symptoms that you see. Mental diagnoses don't. It's almost the other way around: certain clusters of symptoms tend to occur together, and so we give them a name and call them a diagnosis. But they could be caused by different things in different people, so that diagnosis doesn't necessarily tell you how to treat someone, or what their prognosis is, etc.
hope that helps
Peg
poster:pegasus
thread:893029
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20090421/msgs/893042.html