Topic: diagnosis

For the most part, if you are hoping that insurance, Medicare or Medicaid, or another third-party payor will help with–or pick up entirely–the costs of treatment, you’ll be running into ASAM criteria that control who gets what kind of treatment.

As a judge once put it: it was clear to him that psychiatrists got together and defined various disorders, and a few years afterwards, they got together and redefined them.

Therapy we might see as fiddling with the ‘software’. Not so different from treating a chronic disease such as diabetes, where education and counseling improve outcomes.

Another common criticism is that the diagnostic system dehumanizes clinical care, leading us to think about disorders rather than people.

We’re brought up to view a pattern of problems with alcohol or drugs as the result of a variety of other factors— psychological issues, or lack of willpower, or moral weakness, or some terrible past experience. That makes it difficult for most of us to switch over to the view of addiction as a chronic illness.

If you’re happy with your program of recovery, find another therapist who believes in letting the client direct the course of therapy.

A patient said he’d visited a local family clinic three times in the past year for drinking-related problems and the physician never once mentioned that he needed treatment.