A look at psychiatric decision making.

The author reviews the efforts of medicine and psychiatry to understand their decision-making processes and notes the lack of psychiatric literature in this area. The decision table, a sophisticated form of algorithm, is introduced as a structure to help explain the decision-making process. This tool is applied to the evaluation and biological treatment of depression. Decision tables can be used as an educational tool, a method to facilitate the delivery of mental health care, a method to monitor the quality of treatment, and as a research tool.