9-part series on over-diagnosis

Ray Moynihan, a terrific health care journalist who is now pursuing his PhD on overdiagnosis and working as a Senior Research Fellow at Bond University in Australia, kicks off the first of a nine-part series, “Over-diagnosis Epidemic” on TheConversation.edu.au website.

The first part is an introduction, “Preventing over-diagnosis: how to stop harming the healthy.”

Other colleagues author the subsequent parts in the series:

Part two: Over-diagnosis and breast cancer screening: a case study

Part three: The perils of pre-diseases: forgetfulness, mild cognitive impairment and pre-dementia

Part four: How genetic testing is swelling the ranks of the ‘worried well’

Part five: PSA screening and prostate cancer over-diagnosis

Part six: Over-diagnosis: the view from inside primary care

Part seven: Moving the diagnostic goalposts: medicalising ADHD

Part eight: The ethics of over-diagnosis: risk and responsibility in medicine

Part nine: Ending over-diagnosis: how to help without harming

Comments

Dawn Smith posted on October 19, 2012 at 10:51 am

This article helps a lot. Kids that are not diagnosed with ADHD may have the same behaviors manifested by kids that are diagnosed with it. For us parents, educating ourselves with credible information lessens confusion and overreaction. Who knows what could happen to a child receiving ADHD medications when it was not ADHD after all but in fact, normal behavior of a perfectly normal child? Or maybe, a child not diagnosed, therefore no medications given, what would happen to his future?