Biases in Diagnosis - Diagnosis

Question 1

Ethnicity - Rack

Answer 1

African-Caribbean’s 3 times more likely than whites and asians to be diagnosed.
Due to culture-bound disorders, may be diagnosed as mentally ill on the basis of behaviour which is perfectly normal within their subculture.

Question 2

Gender - Braverman

Answer 2

• Women more likely to be diagnosed than men.
• Found health professionals used different adjectives to describe the normal male and normal female (female = submissive and concerned about appearance). Therefore any female who is not submissive is diagnosed with a disorder.

Question 3

Aim - Ford & Widiger

Answer 3

To see if clinicians were stereotyping genders when diagnosing disorders

Question 4

Antisocial personality disorder

Answer 4

Disregard and violation of rights for others

Question 5

Histrionic Personality Disorder

Answer 5

Excessive emotionality and attention-seeking, including an excessive need for approval and inappropriate seductiveness.

Question 6

Borderline personality disorder

Answer 6

Disturbance of personality function in a person, characterised by depth and variability of moods.

Question 7

Findings - Borderline personality

Answer 7

Sex-Unspecified case histories were diagnosed most often with borderline personality.

Question 8

Findings - ASPD

Answer 8

Antisocial personality disorders diagnosed correctly 42% of the time with males, 15% with females

Question 9

Findings - ASPD/HPD

Answer 9

Females misdiagnosed with histrionic personality disorder 46% of the time when they had ASPD

Question 10

Findings - HPD

Answer 10

Histrionic personality disorder was correct diagnosed in 76% of females, 44% of males.

Question 11

Conclusions

Answer 11

1: Practitioners are biased by stereotypical views of gender.
2: Females are likely to seen as histrionic, where as men are more likely to be seen as antisocial.
3: Misdiagnosis of women was greater than men, this suggests sexist interpretations.

Question 12

Representativeness

Answer 12

• Response rate = 266 from national register, therefore

- Final sample = large 354 and significant length of clinician experience 15.6 years

Question 13

Social class

Answer 13

• Confounding variable
• African-Carribbeans are more likely to be lower in socio-economic classes, these classes have higher diagnosis rates.
• Schizophrenia 8 times more likely in the lower classes

Question 14

Quantitative data

Answer 14

• easy to compare and draw causation (IV manipulated DV eg. sex manipulated diagnosis)
• no qualitative data therefore conclusions have to have been inferred by the researchers.