BMJ  2005;330 (21 May), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7501.0-g

Editor's choice

Simple problems please, and one at a time

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Great is our desire as doctors to identify a single simple problem that has a single simple solution. This approach usefully fits the constraints of the 10 minute consultation, but its roots lie in Western medicine's biomedical model of disease. Doctors are still trained to diagnose single well defined disorders and to offer single targeted treatments. We prefer if possible to deal with one problem at a time.

The very name post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) fits this picture: a single problem with an identifiable cause and potentially therefore a single solution. But this is deceptive says Simon Wessely (p 1215). Since the Vietnam war, when PTSD was first characterised, psychiatry has had to accept that "the invention of the disorder did not reverse half a century of knowledge and that the person exposed to the trauma matters just as much as the trauma itself." It has proved . . . [Full text of this article]

Fiona Godlee, editor

(fgodlee@bmj.com)


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