Can an accurate psychiatry diagnosis come from a 15min session?

"Working" diagnosis: Maybe a "working" diagnosis could come out of an abbreviated session like that -- but this would not allow a complete study of past, social, family, or general medical history. A working diagnosis means a basis for starting to work together, and it can be amended or appended as more knowledge comes forth. Being restricted to only 15 minutes' time would likely frustrate patient & doctor both.

I agree with Dr. : Pappas. There is more room for inaccuracy if there is only 15 minutes allotted for an evaluation. For instance, it may be easy to determine that a patient has a major depressive episode in 15 minutes. But what could be missed is that it is a bipolar depression - which requires different medications than a unipolar depression. Sometimes cutting corners is ok, but sometimes there is a cost to it.

POSSIBLE: Most things under the sun are possible. Maybe i could get a grasp of a problem in 15 minutes - or maybe not. I could act in an emergency given 15 min - or waybe act wrongly. As a psychiatrist i would not feel i knew enough to be helpful in 15 minutes. In one 15 minute visit i could learn a lot but maybe not enough at all. I don't do it that way, and I have been a psychiatrist for a long time.

Quick diagnosis: Personally, i find it very difficult to diagnose in psychiatry in only 15 minutes unless I have a lot of background information (old records, information provided by family etc) or unless it is an extremely obvious situation (very blatant, severe symptoms). Part of the diagnosis is ruling out things as well, and it would be very hard to ask all the appropriate questions in a short period of time.