I agree, it's easy for a doctor to initially mistake symptoms. I can understand not getting it spot on instantly, but what about when it goes on for a very long time? In my case, it didn't help that I was under state care and being shuttled to a new dr every few months because the clinic literally couldn't keep a doctor for that long. But I wonder if maybe more education on how to look for abnormal or rare reactions in medical schools would help? What can we do so that people aren't seriously injured by treatments or serious disorders neglected because its so easy to diagnose something as psychiatric? Maybe the way psychiatrists are allowed to diagnose should be changed? Should there be more repercussions for doctors that harm a patient? This also becomes an issue of patient trust in the doctor to not overlook something for what might be "easier" to treat.
Ive just seen so many of these happen, where they assume its not likely and so not worth checking out. Some even worse situations were regarding friends. One friend was on multiple medications that increased serotonin as she was being treated for cancer and had some mild depression as well (mostly related to having cancer). They kept piling on meds for every side effect, and apparently multiple meds she was on increased serotonin. She ended up having serotonin poisoning, a very rare but life threatening condition where the body is literally poisoned by too much serotonin. She called the dr when she began experiencing symptoms and they told her it was rare and not likely she had it and to go ahead and take her meds and "sleep it off". She decided not to take them and went to the hospital. She stopped breathing twice, had multiple seizures, and hallucinated for days. The hospital told her that had she taken the night meds, she would have died. Yet she can't even seek legal action because she fully recovered. Another friend, as a child, (she grew up with me), had a leak in cerebrospinal fluid in her brain that was causing severe neurological symptoms. For over a year, she kept being told it was psychiatric and it was attributed to her mother being murdered a few years before. Finally, the principal of our school got scared because this friend was literally laying down in the parking lot near cars and said she had to have a neurological evaluation before she could return. They found the fluid and rushed her to brain surgery, saying she would've died very soon from the pressure on her brain had they not found it.
I guess it just scares me that being able to diagnose psychiatric disorders so easily can lead to such serious repercussions when people are misdiagnosed and given treatments they don't need or serious problems are neglected because "it's just mental illness". I just wonder what we can do as a society to keep doctors from dismissing rare but serious situations by quickly diagnosing something as psychiatric/claiming a patients concerns are invalid because its "rare"? Perhaps it's an attitude problem that needs to be addressed with doctors, or maybe they are far too overworked. Should doctors more often err on the side of caution, even if it costs more? Is it really ok for doctors to generalize when it's people's lives we are talking about?
I also wonder if there have ever been any studies on doctors and harmful misdiagnoses involving rare conditions/reactions. It'd be interesting to see what the scale of the problem is at a societal level. Also, all my and my friends' experiences are in the US. Anyone notice this problem in the UK? Other thoughts? I'm really interested in discussing this as it seems I don't read or hear much about this type of thing, but I seem to have it happen to me or others close to me a lot.
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