Matters Of The Mind: Finding Better Ways To Identify Psychotic Disorders

BOSTON (CBS) – New research findings, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry this month, report a disconnect between traditional diagnoses for psychotic disorders and biological signatures found in a patient’s brain. Related: More From The Matters Of The Mind Series “We need better labels that are based on objective, measurable, biological data, not just simply symptom based data,” said Dr. Matcheri Keshavan, a principal investigator in the study and Vice-Chair of Public Psychiatry with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. A traditional method for diagnosing a psychotic illness like schizophrenia or bi-polar disorder involves evaluating a patient’s symptoms, such as hallucinations or hearing voices. Experts do not always agree with each other on a person’s diagnosis based on those symptoms. “If you want to distinguish between one kind of cancer versus another kind of cancer, a biopsy will tell you,” Keshavan told WBZ-TV. “We don’t have a reliable way of distinguishing between psychiatric disorders.” Keshavan leads the Boston group of researchers, one of five teams across the country, who studied more than 2,000 participants over about 8 years. Roughly 800 patients diagnosed with a psychotic disease, 1,000 of their family members, and 200 healthy people were screened under the Bipolar Schizophrenia Network for Intermediate Phenotypes (B-SNIP) Consortium. The project identified three categories that mo...
Source: WBZ-TV - Breaking News, Weather and Sports for Boston, Worcester and New Hampshire - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Health Local News Syndicated Local Bree Sison Dr. Matcheri Keshavan Matters Of The Mind Source Type: news