“Imagine a world where we allow for medical uncertainty. We allow medically unexplained symptoms to be part of our medical puzzles without patient apology and without doctor frustration.”
This reminds me of one of the basic principles of Finnish “Open Dialogue”, something that i see as sadly lacking in conventional psychiatry: “tolerating uncertainty”. It is one of the seven basic principles of Open Dialogue and one of the key elements of Dialogic Practice.
“Tolerating uncertainty is at the heart of dialogue. It is thus a specific element and an element that defines the other elements. In Open Dialogue, there is the fundamental orientation of creating an organic understanding of the crisis with everyone’s input (polyphony). This stance is based on the assumption, as well as our experience, that every crisis has unique features. Hasty decisions and rapid conclusions about the nature of the crisis, diagnosis, medication, and the organization of the therapy are avoided. Further, we do not give ready-made solutions such as specific, preplanned therapeutic interventions to the family or the single person in crisis.”
http://umassmed.edu/psychiatry/globalinitiatives/opendialogue/