Doctors sometimes insist that their patients’ illnesses ar

Hey folks,

Couple of things to note here.

First off, the sentence already tells us that doctors insist that illnesses are the result of depression. So it doesn't make sense for B to tell us in the underlined portion that these ailments (another word for "illnesses") are the cause for a psychological disorder (like depression). That's the complete opposite meaning. We want depression leads to illness, not illness leads to depression. So B changes the meaning of the sentence.

Second, and more challengingly, "ascribe" always goes with the preposition "to", not "as". Something is "ascribed to" something else, not "ascribed as" something else.

Finally, to "ascribe" is to attribute something to something else — to claim one thing is caused by another. So it's really redundant to say "ascribe something as a cause".

When the placement of words switches around between answer choices, look out for changes in meaning — remember, we always want to match the meaning of the original sentence on the GMAT!