The psychiatric diagnostic process is very different from diagnosis in other areas in medicine – it is a lot more difficult, since we have no biomarkers of any kind, only our translation into diagnostic categories of what we see and hear when we meet the patient. We are trying to find ways to validate our assessments with questionnaires and standardized interviews, but the difficulties remain. To make a psychiatric diagnosis is a question of very competent and empathic translation, and to...

One of the most central assignments of health care is diagnostics, i. e. collecting and summarizing the problems presented by the patient...