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A look at psychiatric decision making

Published Online:https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.135.11.1384

The author reviews the efforts of medicine and psychiatry to understand their decision-making processes and notes the lack of psychiatric literature in this area. The decision table, a sophisticated form of algorithm, is introduced as a structure to help explain the decision- making process. This tool is applied to the evaluation and biological treatment of depression. Decision tables can be used as an educational tool, a method to facilitate the delivery of mental health care, a method to monitor the quality of treatment, and as a research tool.

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