Word: generalizing
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...regular doctors really know how to identify depression? A large new scientific review published July 30 by the journal Lancet suggests they don't. In a review of 41 previous studies involving more than 50,000 patients in developed nations around the world, the authors found that general practitioners make frequent mistakes, missing true cases of depression about half the time and incorrectly diagnosing it in 19% of healthy people. (See how to prevent illness...
Alex Mitchell, Amol Vaze and Sanjay Rao of Leicester General Hospital in the U.K. estimate that about 1 in 5 people in developed nations will experience depression in their lifetime. That means that among a general patient population of 100, about 20 will develop the condition, but the typical doctor will find it in only 10 of those who have it. And among the 80 healthy people, the doctor will incorrectly identify depression...
...doctors had missed depression in their patients. In some of the studies, researchers went back over case records and picked out patients who appeared to have the illness. In other studies, researchers interviewed patients and made diagnoses in person. But virtually all the studies pointed to the same conclusion: general physicians aren't very good at recognizing the most common mental illness in the world...
That's surely a worthy goal, although, at least in the U.S., it offers a classic example of the incentive problems in the current health-care system: if general practitioners spend extra time with each patient trying to diagnose psychiatric problems, they will see fewer patients in a day, which means fewer reimbursements overall from the insurance companies. So is there another...
...officials had worried that last month's formal handover of control of Iraqi cities to Iraqi security forces might erode gains that had already been made. But Gates said Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. general in Iraq, told him the security situation is better than expected...