The use of diagnosis

Diagnosis is a tool that the doctor uses when he or she has to find out which disease you are suffering from.

If you for example present with some symptoms that could be indicative of depression, the doctor will on the basis of your symptoms and his or her own examinations make a diagnosis which is used to find the answers to the following questions:

• Do you suffer from depression or not?

• If the answer is yes, what type of depression – mild, moderate or severe?

• Are you suffering from anything else - physical disease, anxiety, abuse, psychosis?

• What will the course of the disease be - is there any risk of suicide?

• Do you perhaps need to be admitted?

• Which treatment is the best in this case - medicine and/or psychotherapy? Or electroconvulsive therapy?

• What complications can occur - what side-effects are there? Is there any risk of abuse?

• Can relapses and new depressive episodes be prevented?

Diagnoses are also a prerequisite for being able to do research and obtain new knowledge. By using diagnoses we can compare a group of patients with another group of patients and see which one of the treatments is the best. By following patients who have the same diagnosis we obtain new knowledge about:

• the cause of the disease
• the course of the disease
• possible complications
• which treatment is the best
• how the disease can be prevented