IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v73y2011i6p858-865.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Diagnosis, psychiatry and neurology: The case of Huntington Disease

Author

Listed:
  • Halpin, Michael

Abstract

Although Huntington Disease (HD) is recognized as a neurological condition, it has a number of psychiatric effects, with recent studies suggesting that these effects can appear years prior to the telltale neurological symptoms. This trajectory has, in part, led to the misdiagnosis of HD as a psychiatric illness, as explicated in numerous case studies. This paper utilizes HD as a case study to investigate the social consequences of diagnosis by highlighting the tensions and ambiguities between neurology and psychiatry, while also discussing the difficulties that HD creates for psychiatry's diagnostic schema. Findings are based on 30 in-depth interviews conducted with both individuals with HD and informal caregivers (e.g., spouses) in British Columbia, Canada. The findings address numerous instances of misdiagnosis and the resulting negative impacts for individual health and well-being. The findings are further discussed in relation to the work of Bakhtin and Latour, with suggestions presented to ameliorate such misdiagnoses.

Suggested Citation

  • Halpin, Michael, 2011. "Diagnosis, psychiatry and neurology: The case of Huntington Disease," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(6), pages 858-865, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:73:y:2011:i:6:p:858-865
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953611002085
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Floyd, Bonnie J., 1997. "Problems in accurate medical diagnosis of depression in female patients," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 403-412, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wiscons, Lucas Z., 2022. "Particularizing the picture: Features and uses of instantiation stories told by clinicians doing autism diagnosis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 306(C).
    2. Anahita Brown & Katherine Sewell & Caroline A. Fisher, 2017. "Characterisation of aggression in Huntington's disease: rates, types and antecedents in an inpatient rehabilitation setting," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(19-20), pages 2922-2931, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.

      Corrections

      All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:73:y:2011:i:6:p:858-865. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

      If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

      If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

      If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

      For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

      Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

      IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.