Monday, March 19, 2018

Delusions

Can We Measure Delusions?

There might be a way—and if so, we could use it to detect and treat them in the earliest stages, before they become debilitating

It was midday when an ambulance brought Rose to the Emergency Department.
The triage nurses, with their characteristic knack for brevity, had written “50 year old schizophrenic woman hearing/seeing dead boyfriend.” The medical team had done the standard workup—temperature, blood pressure, EKG, labs to screen for an electrolyte imbalance, drug or toxin that might explain Rose’s condition. Everything seemed normal, making Rose (whose name and narrative details have been changed to protect her privacy) a psychiatry patient.

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