validity

• system overlap

  there's a lot of overlap in symptoms of schizophrenia & other conditions

  • example = symptoms of bipolar can include delusions as well. social withdrawal also occurs in schizophrenia, depression and bipolar
  • hard to know which one they should be diagnosed with

  = casts doubt o validity of diagnosis
• issue of system overlap - Ketter

  Ketter pointed out that this can cause misdiagnosis, leading to years of delay in receiving relevant treatment, suffering and symptoms can worsen

  = high levels of suicide can occur so system overlap can have serious consequences so fixing it would save money
• comorbidity

  morbidity = explains how common a medical issue is

  comorbidity = when two or more medical conditions occur together

  • where 2 conditions are frequently diagnosed together it suggests there may be issues with the validity of the diagnosis
  • the conditions could be too similar to be considered sperate conditions
  • weakness of classifying and diagnosing schizophrenia
• Buckley et al - issue with comorbidity

  found that 50% of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia are also diagnosed with depression

  47% diagnosed with substance abuse

  23% diagnosed with ocd

  = schizophrenia commonly occurs alongside other mental illness and disorders are co-morbid
• gender bias

  since 1980's males have been diagnosed with schizophrenia more than females

  • could be due to having a higher genetic vulnerability or gender bias in diagnosis
• cotton et al - gender bias

  compared males and female schizophrenics with similar symptoms and found that females functioned better than males, with work and family relationships

  • shows that males and females with similar symptoms received different diagnosis due to females having better functions
  • classification is not valid and is problematic as females may not receive the help they need
• Loring and Powell - issue with gender bias

  they randomly chose 209 male and female psychiatrists to read descriptions of patients behavior (made up) and to give a diagnosis of the patients

  • when patient described as male there was 56% diagnosis
  • when described as female there was 20% diagnosis

  this gender bias was not the case in female clinicians

  = theres a problem with validity of diagnosing and is affected by the gender of the patient and clinician
• cultural bias


  research shows there is a significant variation between cultures in diagnosing schizophrenia. we can see this in Copeland's research that there was a large disparity in diagnosis between US and British psychiatrists. this questions reliability of the diagnosis of schizophrenia - it suggests that p's can show the same symptoms but receive different diagnosis because of their ethnic background
• issue with cultural bias

  African Americans & English people with Afro-Caribbean origin are several times more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia than white people.

  • could be because positive symptoms (hearing voices) are more acceptable in African cultures but in the west are they are irrational, unacceptable
  • supported by non-western cultures they tend to be playful and positive whereas in the west they tend to be negative, threatening
  • psychiatrists may be unknowingly ethnocentric as they are culturally biased to what is normal in their cultures= over-diagnosing of certain cultures