MENTAL PATIENTS- MISDIAGNOSED?

THE DOCTOR IS IN:
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LAS VEGAS- Hello America, and how's the world treating you?

Seniors and children take the biggest brunt of being misdiagnosed with a mental problem while being treated in an emergency room.

Everyday across this country hospitals generally dump patients that arrive in emergency rooms. The hospitals don't want to be bothered with what they think is a mental case. Many hospitals with a busy emergency room resent the fact that they have to do work-ups on patients when the patient walks in. Many feel as though a complete evaluation is a waste of time and often neglect problems relating to the patient.

If hospital personnel would do a timely and accurate work-up they could rule out a number of probable medical problems concerning the patient who presents with mental and psychiatric issues.

The haste in which some of these hospitals choose to dump the patient into a mental health and/or psychiatric facility causes that facility to handle a multitude of actual medical problems that the mental care unit is ill equipped to handle both with proper expertise and proper equipment for the medical problem.

For example, a senior citizen may be sent to the mental health or psychiatric unit with the diagnosis of a psychosis but once the proper intake and a full, complete work-up is done it is discovered that the patient has been experiencing diarrhea or constipation and in many female patients they may be experiencing an infection of the urinary tract . This is not uncommon, especially with the elderly and children. For many patients that are diagnosed as manic, or schizophrenic they were found to be on medications such as amphetamines and really required IV fluids.

I believe there should be a more detailed and complete assessment of patients that are treated in the hospital emergency rooms.- And, that's my opinion.

Bradley W. Kuhns,Ph.D., O.M.D.
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Dr. Kuhns can be reached by e-mail at:
bradleykuhns@gmail.com