How stable are psychiatric diagnoses? (Preprint)
![Sankey diagram shows diagnosis switches.](/sites/g/files/oketem576/files/styles/3_2_480x320/public/media/images/sankey-diagram.png.webp?itok=Rzu_xI0Z)
Spoiler alert: not very. Switching between diagnoses is common, and patients often accumulate comorbidities.
We leverage 17 years of Electronic Health Record data from a psychiatric hospital to study diagnostic instability and illness trajectories. We delineate disease trajectories for >22,000 individuals treated for severe mental illness. These trajectories are diverse: they include both diagnostic switching and the accumulation of comorbidities. We also identify predictors of visit-to-visit diagnostic instability by combining structured data and NLP-features extracted from clinical notes. Resources like this set the stage for advancing large-scale genomic research in Colombia.
Check out our new preprint on trajectories of severe mental illness, led by the amazing @juandelahozco!