Question: What equipment do you use to guarantee somebody is diagnosed with something?

Lauren Burns answered on 25 Jun 2018:

Great question! I deal with mental health, so there are a number of questionnaires that score someones mental health (e.g. Beck’s Depression Inventory would be use to examine Depression). However, what the doctors use in the UK to diagnose is the International Classification of Diseases version 10 (ICD-10) to check the symptoms of different people and how long a disease has been present (this is used for both physical and mental health diagnoses). The problem is that mental health is actually very tricky to diagnose because there are many similar disorders (e.g. there are multiple types of ‘depressive disorder’), and many symptoms overlap. Therefore, sometimes mistakes are made (as we are all human!) so it is tricky to ‘guarantee’ someone’s diagnosis.