Developing understanding : Schizophrenia, reliability and validity

What is schizophrenia

A mental disorder that affects a sufferers thought processes and ability to determine reality

How do you classify schizophrenia

Using books ICD - 10 and DSM - 5

What are the differences in these classification systems

ICD focusses on a wider range of symptoms to diagnose schizophrenia, DSM focusses mostly on hallucinations and delusions.

What is positive schizophrenia symptoms referring to

Symptoms that are an add on to daily life and not reducing someones ability to functionm

What are the positive symptoms

Hallucinations, distorted perceptions of reality

Delusions , believing something that is not real, eg they are king ect.

What is negative schizophrenia symptoms referring to

Symptoms that are taking away a normal function from someone

What are the negative symptoms

Avolation, Individual struggles with everyday goal oreientated activity

Speech poverty , bad verbal communication or disjointed sentences ect

Outline Cheniaux et al study

Two pschyiatrists given 100 people to diagnose using the different tests, ICD and DSM.

What was the results of Cheniaux et al's study

39/100 people were diagnosed using the DSM

68/100 people were diagnosed using the ICD

Reliability in the diagnosis of schizophrenia

reliability is when we have consistant results when repeating the same experiment with the same procedure ect. If results stay consistant it means we can rely on the diagnosis being correct

What study involves reliability in diagnosing schizophrenia being questioned

Inter rater reliabilty is poor in cheniaux study, the two doctors had different diagnosis results when one used the ICD and one the DSM

Validity in the diagnosis of schizophrenia

Validity is the accuracy of those tests on being able to diagnose schizophrenia. If we use different tests and get the same results we can be assured the diagnosis is valid

What did cheniaux find about validity

Issue with concurrent validity because in cheniaux study the two different assesments , ICD and DSM did not achieve the same results showing that there is an issue with validity of the diagnosis methods

Issues with validity in diagnosing schizophrenia

System overlap may be a validity issue, many of the schizophrenia symptoms overlap with other mental health diagnosis, bipolar and depression, making it difficult to diagnose correctly

What is an issue if diagnosed incorrectly

Someone suffering may either not get the medication needed, or someone without schizophrenia but incorrectly diagnosed to have it will have negative consequences such as losing a job

What is an issue with reliability and validity

co morbidity, when two or more conditions occur together.

What did Buckley find

Half the patients with schizophrenia also had a diagnosis of another mental health diagnosis, eg depression

Why is cultural bias an issue in schizophrenia

hearing voices can be seen as a positive in some cultures meaning there is more cases usually, making diagnosis difficult to generalise across cultures

Why is gender bias an issue in schizophrenia

loring and powell found that male clinicians are more likely to diagnose males with schizophrenia than females,

however female clinicians didn't have this issue.