"Disease Labeling" By Doctors May Cause Parents to Over-medicate Their Children

Whether or not a doctor labels a child's potential symptoms as those associated with a specific disease impacts a parent's decision to medicate his or her child, according to a study that will be published in the journal Pediatrics.

Researchers surveyed 175 parents, mostly mothers, regarding how they would react if their doctor told them their child's crying and spitting up were the symptoms included in gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), while others were asked how they would respond if their doctor did not suggest any specific condition.

One-fifth of those polled had children who had been previously diagnosed with GERD.

In all, parents were randomly assigned one of four different scenarios: Their infant had GERD but there were no effective drugs; their infant had GERD with no further comment on medications; no disease was offered in the context of drugs being ineffective; or no disease label or drug information was proposed.

The result was that those who were given a GERD diagnosis were interested in treating their child even if they were cautioned that the drugs wouldn't help. On the other hand, those who were not offered a disease label only expressed interest in medication if the physician hadn't mentioned the inefficacy of the hypothetical drugs. When parents were told regarding the uselessness of the drugs, they did not pursue the matter further.

"The disease label seems to send the message that there is an illnesss that requires medical treatment," Laura Scherer, an assistant professor of psycholgcal sciences at the University of Missouri and the study's lead author, told U.S. News. "But, depending on the situation, medical treatments may be necessary, or not. In the case of GERD, an otherwise healthy infant probably will not benefit from medication. So in this case [that] label can be misleading."

And while the study may have been specific to GERD, Scherer fears the practice of disease labeling may result in overdiagnosis throughout the practice of medicine.

"It's important for both patients and doctors to know that these kinds of labels can influence how parents or patients respond to symptoms," she added. "Words have the power to make a normal process seem like something requires medical intervention."