validity

• P: Loring and Powell found evidence of gender bias among psychiatrists in the diagnosis of schizophrenia

  E: they randomly selected 290 male and female psychiatrists to read 2 case vignettes of patients behaviour. these psychiatrists were asked to offer their judgement using standard diagnostic criteria. when the patients were described as males or no information was given about their gender, 56% of psychiatrists gave a diagnosis of schizophrenia. when the patients were described as female only 20% were given a diagnosis of schizophrenia
• link for gender bias

  L: this gender bias was not as evident among the female psychiatrists, suggesting that diagnosis is influenced not only by the gender of the patient but also the gender of the clinician
• P: a number of studies have examined single co-morbidities with schizophrenia, but these studies have usually involved only relatively small sample sizes.

  E: weber looked at 6 million hospital discharge records, finding evidence of many co-morbid non-psychiatric diagnoses. many patients with a primary diagnosis of schizophrenia were also diagnosed with medical problems including asthma, hypertension and type 2 diabetes
• link for co morbidity

  L: the authors concluded that the nature of a diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder is that patients tend to receive a lower standard of medical care, which in turn affects the prognosis for patients with schizophrenia