issues surrounding classification and diagnosis

• issues with validity

  Gender bias - accuracy of diagnosis dependent on gender of individual - diagnostic criteria may be biased towards one gender rather than the other - clinicians may base judgement on stereotypical beliefs about a gender

  symptom overlap - some symptoms of sz are also found un other disorders like bipolar - both sz and bipolar involve delusions

  comorbidity - two or more conditions co-occur - e.g. schizophrenics may also have symptoms of depression - difficulty in treatment
• VALIDITY EVALUATION - Loring and Powell

  found group of randomly selected male and female psychiatrists given a case described as male 56% gave sz diagnosis but when described as female only 20% diagnosed - gender bias not evident among female psychiatrists - subjective based on gender stereotypes and not facts of the case
• VALIDITY EVALUATION - Ellason and Ross


  not only is there a great deal of overlap between sz and bipolar, people with another disorder called dissociative identity disorder (DID) have more symptoms of schizophrenia than people diagnosed as schizophrenic - brings into question whether sz, bipolar and DID are operate disorders or part of the same spectrum
• VALIDITY EVALUATION - Buckley


  found comorbid depression occurs in 50% of patients and 47% have a diagnosis of comorbid substance abuse - significant overlap between disorders, makes diagnosis of sz as a distinct disorder very difficult
• reliability

  culture bias - psychiatrists are influenced by their own cultures values and expectations when diagnosing patients - of what is seen as bizarre in one culture is not viewed as bizarre in another, this could lead to inconsistent diagnosis
• RELIABILITY EVALUATION - Copeland


  found when British and American psychiatrists given a description of a patient and asked for a diagnosis 69% of Americans diagnosed sz but only 2% of the British did - suggests diagnosis has very low inter observer reliability between cultures
• RELIABILITY EVALUATION - patients from certain culture groups more likely to be diagnosed with sz

  Harrison - reported African-Caribbean groups were 8 times more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia than white groups in the UK - psychiatrists may be misinterpreting cultural differences in behaviour as bizarre and therefore schizophrenic symptoms when they're just differences - ethnocentric bias reduces validity too
• RELIABILITY EVALUATION - social stigma carried by being incorrectly labelled

  such inaccurate diagnosis can have a long lasting negative impact on the lives of those diagnosed - despite these problems the classification systems do at least allow professionals to share a common language which helps in communicating ideas and also allows greater opportunities for researcher which can lead to a better understanding of sz