Gender bias

Unreported facts in diagnosis

• Men suffer more severe negative symptoms than women as well as suffering more from substance related disorders

• Goldstein (1993) - Men are more likely to be involuntarily committed to psychiatric wards than women

Biased research

Some psychologists claim research into schizophrenia has neglected to use many female patients, questioning its usefulness and representativeness.

Underdiagnosis of females

• Some research has suggested that women are underdiagnosed in comparison to men

• This could have far-reaching consequences as many women could be denied access to treatment and have to continue suffering from debilitating symptoms of schizophrenia

Research Support (+)

• Cotton (2009)- women with schizophrenia also seem to recover more and suffer less relapses than their male counterparts

• Ignoring this would lead to a beta bias in clinicians not considering important factors in the diagnosis and recovery from schizophrenia

Issues with research (-)

• Nasser et al found much of the early research into schizophrenia was conducted with men only. Therefore, a lot of research findings concerning treatments and explanations of schizophrenia may be inappropriate for women

• When research focuses excusively on men it can be accused of androcentrism and lacks generalisability to target populations (e.g. all individuals with schizophrenia)

Issues in preconceptions (-)

• Loring & Powell - Randomly selected 290 male and female psychiatrists to read 2 cases of patients. They were then asked to offer their judgements of these individuals using standard diagnostic criteria

• When patients were described as ‘male’ or no gender, 56% gave a diagnosis of schizophrenia, while patients described as females only 20% given a diagnosis

• This gender bias was less prominent with female psychiatrists

Applications (+)

• Research can be used to help train psychologists to not misdiagnose females who have schizophrenia symptoms with other disorders associated with females

• This should result in more women receiving the correct diagnosis of schizophrenia, and males should not be overdiagnosed and should not receive an incorrect diagnosis.

• They then have further positive applications as these individuals are able to access the treatments that are right for their needs e.g. CBT