I have an idea, in very rudimentary form, and I'd like to get peoples' opinions on it.
But first, an amusing anecdote:
The attending who taught me ECT was a character. He'd been doing ECT forever, and his approach was quite old-school. When the patient started to seize, as noted by the twitching toe, he would determine the length of the seizure by counting, 1-Mississippi, 2-Mississippi, 3 Mississippi...
One time, I suggested we look at the clock, and he said, "No, no, this is better." 1-Mississippi was his definition of clinical rigor. Clearly, this was not science.
I read somewhere, some time ago, that the DSM (3?) committee voted on the criteria for MDD. "Those in favor of worthlessness/guilt? Approved! Those in favor of helplessness/hopelessness? Not approved!"
Clearly, this was not science.
But here's the interesting part. How was it determined that 126 was the cutoff for diabetes? I'm not going to look up the history, but I imagine it started with the idea that diabetes was a disease, whose symptoms included ketosis, polyuria, polyphagia, polydypsia, etc. And after seeing many patients with this condition, some clever person figured out that it had something to do with glucose. And later, they realized that if a patient's glucose level is too high, that patient has diabetes. And then "too high" needed to be defined. Presumably, they took a lot of patients who had known diabetes and compared them with normal controls by testing glucose levels. And eventually, they figured out that most patients with diabetes had glucose levels > 126, and most patients without diabetes had levels < 126.
That is science. And it involved a lot of data over a long period of time. Now, granted, they had a test they were looking at-plasma glucose concentration. And there are no convenient lab tests in psychiatry. But there is data.
Not the data you get from a drug-company-sponsored study, where fancy statisticians are hired to produce any desired reality (see, for example, this post). And not the data you get from a 20 person committee voting on a diagnosis.
But what if it was a 200 person committee? Or 2000? Or 20,000? Imagine 20,000 mental health practitioners chiming in on which symptoms they've seen the most. Or which meds they've found most effective. Or least. Or what type of therapy works best for what type of patient. One anecdote is meaningless. But 20,000 anecdotes? Not so meaningless.
I'm talking about the power of the internet. There was a time when the largest number of clinicians you could get in one place was at an APA meeting. Or a survey sent out by snail mail. Now, there's worldwide access at all times. Who needs the DSM when there's the possibility of open source psychiatric data and unlimited discussion?
Would this do anything to determine etiology? No. Not in and of itself, anyway. Would it be valid or accurate? Who knows? People are skeptical about Wikipedia, but is there any more cause for skepticism there than in an old-fashioned encyclopedia article written by one biased individual? Or one closeted committee?
Facebook changed the world by recognizing that a huge collection of connected individuals is a very powerful thing. Why can't we make that idea work to our patients' benefits?
Please comment on this post. I'd like to get a sense of what people imagine this could be like.