Problems with diagnosis

• There are problems with reliability and validity for diagnosis
• Problems with reliability

  • Schizophrenia affected with cultural bias
  • Harrison et al found over-diagnosis in west indian psychiatric patients in Bristol
  • Ethnic minority patients are misinterpreted
  • Patients can display same behaviour but have different diagnosis depending on ethnicity
• Problems with reliability

  • Cultural bias shown from medical staff
  • Copeland found 69% of American psychiatrics in study diagnosed a particular patient as having schizophrenia compared to 2% in British psychiatrics
• Problems with reliability

  • Difficulty with gender bias
  • Loring and Powell study 290 psychiatrics diagnose same 2 patients
  • When told patient was male 36% diagnosed schiz
  • When told patient was female 20% diagnosed schiz
  • Gender bias not only from patient but also practitioner
• Problems with validity

  • Rosenhan study on people with no mental health issues admitted into a psychiatric unit by saying they heard voices
  • Once admitted they behaved normally but behaviour was still seen as a symptom of the disorder
• Problems with validity

  • Symptom overlap cause issues
  • Most common symptoms in schiz found in other disorders
• Comorbidity issues

  • Issue making a reliable or valid diagnosis
  • Two or more conditions at same time
  • Some patients belong to known disorder but that others belong to an untreated disorder that is not recognised yet