Psychiatrists seek to provide a medical diagnosis of individuals by an assessment of symptoms, signs and impairment associated with particular types of<unk> . Other<unk>  health professionals, such as clinical psychologists, may or may not apply the same diagnostic categories to their clinical formulation of a client's difficulties and circumstances. The majority of<unk>  health problems are, at least initially, assessed and treated by family physicians (in the UK general practitioners) during consultations, who may refer a patient on for more specialist diagnosis in acute or chronic cases. Routine diagnostic practice in<unk>  health services typically involves an interview known as a<unk>  status examination, where evaluations are made of appearance and behavior, self-reported symptoms,<unk>  health history, and current life circumstances. The views of other professionals, relatives, or other third parties may be taken into account. A physical examination to check for ill health or the effects of medications or other drugs may be conducted. Psychological testing is sometimes used via paper-and-pen or computerized questionnaires, which may include algorithms based on ticking off standardized diagnostic criteria, and in rare specialist cases neuroimaging tests may be requested, but such methods are more commonly found in research studies than routine clinical practice. Time and budgetary constraints often limit practicing psychiatrists from conducting more thorough diagnostic evaluations. It has been found that most clinicians evaluate patients using an unstructured, open-ended approach, with limited training in evidence-based assessment methods, and that inaccurate diagnosis may be common in routine practice. In addition, comorbidity is very common in psychiatric diagnosis, where the same person meets the criteria for more than one disorder. On the other hand, a person may have several different difficulties only some of which meet the criteria for being diagnosed. There may be specific problems with accurate diagnosis in developing countries. More structured approaches are being increasingly used to measure levels of<unk>  illness. * HoNOS is the most widely used measure in English<unk>  health services, being used by at least 61 trusts. In HoNOS a score of 0–4 is given for each of 12 factors, based on functional living capacity. Research has been supportive of HoNOS, although some questions have been asked about whether it provides adequate coverage of the range and complexity of<unk>  illness problems, and whether the fact that often only 3 of the 12 scales vary over time gives enough subtlety to accurately measure outcomes of treatment. Criticism Since the 1980s, Paula Caplan has been concerned about the subjectivity of psychiatric diagnosis, and people being arbitrarily "slapped with a psychiatric label." Caplan says because psychiatric diagnosis is unregulated, doctors are not required to spend much time interviewing patients or to seek a second opinion. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of<unk> s can lead a psychiatrist to focus on narrow checklists of symptoms, with little consideration of what is actually causing the person's problems. So, according to Caplan, getting a psychiatric diagnosis and label often stands in the way of recovery. In 2013, psychiatrist Allen Frances wrote a paper entitled "The New Crisis of Confidence in Psychiatric Diagnosis", which said that "psychiatric diagnosis... still relies exclusively on fallible subjective judgments rather than objective biological tests." Frances was also concerned about "unpredictable overdiagnosis." For many years, marginalized psychiatrists (such as Peter Breggin, Thomas Szasz) and outside critics (such as Stuart A. Kirk) have "been accusing psychiatry of engaging in the systematic medicalization of normality." More recently these concerns have come from insiders who have worked for and promoted the American Psychiatric Association (e.g., Robert Spitzer, Allen Frances). A 2002 editorial in the British Medical Journal warned of inappropriate medicalization leading to disease mongering, where the boundaries of the definition of illnesses are expanded to include personal problems as medical problems or risks of diseases are emphasized to broaden the market for medications. Gary Greenberg, a psychoanalyst, in his book "the Book of Woe", argues that<unk>  illness is really about suffering and how the DSM creates diagnostic labels to categorize people's suffering. Indeed, the psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, in his book "the Medicalization of Everyday Life", also argues that what is psychiatric illness, is not always biological in nature (i.e. social problems, poverty, etc.), and may even be a part of the human condition.
Mental disorder
Insomnia
Physical disorder
Dementia with Lewy bodies  Dementia with Lewy bodies  1
Suboptimal health
Cognitive disorder
Pigmentation disorder
Pain disorder