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Psychology 15 mark question help

Could anyone help me answer this question
To what extent is it valid to identify a disorder from a list of characteristic (15 marks)
Basically at my school for a 15 marker we do 3 PEEC (point, evidence, explanation, counter) paragraphs and it seems to work well.

Heres my plan for this question:

P: Identifying a disorder from a list of characteristics can be seen as high in reliability.
E: Diagnostic manuals such as the DSM-IV provide a comprehensive list of characteristics for each disorder known at the time of publication.
E:For example, the diagnostic criteria listed in the DSM-IV for schizophrenia list a distinct set of symptoms, positive and negative. This includes, for instance, delusions and hallucinations (positive symptoms), as well alogia and affective flatness (negative symptoms). This means that…This makes diagnosing from such criteria high in reliability because it means that clinicians are diagnosing from the same list of symptoms, meaning that the symptoms are consistently being looked for in a patient.
C:h:owever…Despite this, diagnosing a patient with a psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia may not be as simple as it may appear. Even today, there is little evidence that DSM is routinely used with high reliability.

P:Identifying a disorder from a list of characteristics can be seen ashighly reliable.
E: This is because… all psychologists and psychiatrists use the same list of symptoms.
E: For example, the diagnostic criteria for Schizophrenia lists a distinct set of symptoms, positive and negative, including delusions, hallucinations and disorder thought patterns. This means that… diagnosing from such criteria very high in reliability because it means that all psychologists and psychiatrists are diagnosing from the same list of symptoms, meaning that the same symptoms are consistenly being looked for in a patient.
C: However… diagnosing a patient with a psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia may not be as simple as the criteria makes it seems because the very nature of psychotic disorders means that the patient does not realise they have a problem.

P: Identifying a disorder from a list of characteristics can be seen as highly unreliable.
E: This is because… A mental disorder is (arguably) not only biological, so validity becomes so much more problematic to identify.
E:For example, the behaviourists suggesting the symptoms are the disorder so if this is accepted validity can be quite high, whereas the psychodynamic approach tries to speculate on root causes thus struggles with validity. This means that… the DSM claims to be valid in that a classification system defines the disorder, though we can debate the validity of the classifications, and the anti-psychiatry model of Szasz and Laing claim there is no valid label as mental disorders do not exist other than as social constructs of a particular time and place.
C: However… DSM has a major influence on how mental health is thought about and treated in this country. For example,… It helps set research agendas, brings conditions into the public eye and influences clinical guidelines.

And then tie them all together with a conclusion.
Thank-you for your help this has made it a lot more clear we were given the mark schemes but they aren't much help 😐

Could you say that as the criteria is reliable as all clinician would use it to diagnose patients it could be seen as valid as the set shared criteria means you are measuring what you set out to measure? Not sure if this would work or not need to link it to validity as my question wants me to talk about it being valid?
All clinicians using the same criteria would make the diagnoses more internally valid (I,e. the same clinical presentation should be diagnosed in the same way by different people - though that is rarely the case as every Psychiatrist has their own views and experiences; there are countless debates about individual's and their diagnoses). But from a research point of view, using the same criteria should boost inter-rater reliability and thus the internal consistency.

However, if the criteria are incorrect, then its actual validity is called into question. Such reasons are: Not all the pertinent symptoms have been identified, the identified symptoms overlap with two or more conditions and one condition may be mis-diagnosed as another, the condition is too idiosyncratic (Autistic spectrum disorder is a good example of this) and therefore one set of criteria doesn't encompass everyone and potentially misses people who sit outside the normal range of that condition. So even if everyone uses the same criteria, if those criteria are wrong, then everyone is just wrong together.
Original post by _Sinnie_
All clinicians using the same criteria would make the diagnoses more internally valid (I,e. the same clinical presentation should be diagnosed in the same way by different people - though that is rarely the case as every Psychiatrist has their own views and experiences; there are countless debates about individual's and their diagnoses). But from a research point of view, using the same criteria should boost inter-rater reliability and thus the internal consistency.

However, if the criteria are incorrect, then its actual validity is called into question. Such reasons are: Not all the pertinent symptoms have been identified, the identified symptoms overlap with two or more conditions and one condition may be mis-diagnosed as another, the condition is too idiosyncratic (Autistic spectrum disorder is a good example of this) and therefore one set of criteria doesn't encompass everyone and potentially misses people who sit outside the normal range of that condition. So even if everyone uses the same criteria, if those criteria are wrong, then everyone is just wrong together.


Thank-you 😊 got a better idea of what to put now

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