Allowing ageism to go unnoticed and unchallenged leads to internalization of this bias, and ultimately affects our view of ourselves, our outlook, our own cognitive performance, and our life expectancy.

Clinicians must not assume the "treatment resistant" (TR) concept matches a concrete reality; there are myriad causes of treatment failure, each unlikely to be the same as many other cases. We must cease using this TR label and improve our problem-solving skills in order to discover and provide better clinical outcomes.

Effective translational medicine requires ongoing dynamic, multidimensional clinical assessments of each patient that modify treatments as needed to effectively utilize new knowledge.

In psychiatry, 20%-60% of all cases are labeled "treatment resistant". Psychiatrists should view treatment failure as a stage from which eventual remission is expected rather than applying treatment resistant as an endpoint and unsanctioned diagnosis.

“Thinking about how we think” helps develop a logical progression of treatment options and increases our chances of success, rather than unconsciously submitting to the irrational distortions of probability that our minds are prone to rely on.

According to some estimates, about 20% to 60% of psychiatric diagnoses eventually become labeled “treatment resistant,” yet psychiatry seems to lack a consensus on what “treatment resistance” means, including clear criteria, H. Paul Putman III, MD, told Psychiatric Times in an exclusive interview.

The conceptual error we make is confusing treatment resistance with treatment failure. Relabeling a diagnosis as treatment resistant represents a failure of clinical problem-solving when second opinions identify remaining treatment options for more than two-thirds of these patients.

Generative chatbots are not ready to accurately assist us in compiling appropriate facts with references.

Some clinicians wish to find ways to disseminate or support evidence-based information that can affect the health of their patients, but that may be mired in misinformation or heated controversy. Dr. Putman discusses suggestions from some experts.

Subspecialty psychiatry will no doubt continue to provide increasingly effective levels of care to patients, but Dr. Putman suggests the best practice may be approaching the diagnosis of every new patient as a generalist.