Ethical Consideration in Diagnosis

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Ethical considerations in diagnosis There are a lot of ethical consideration in psychological diagnosis, and they greatly influence the process of diagnose. Szasz pointed out ethical issues in diagnosis, which is labeling&stigma. He argues that patients labeled as “mentally disorder” “criminal” would effect their position in society. They would be reject by the society because of the labeling. His argument had effect the classification system, in DSM-IV the new identity are given to those patients so they would be accept by the society. However, there are still ethical concerns since the patients are still labeled as “abnormal”, even though they behave normal. Scheff argued that giving people labels would probably effect their behavior by self fulfilling prophecy, which means, people would behave in ways they think they are. They would automatically play the role of mentally disorder and show more obvious symptoms by knowing that they are mentally ill. Doherty argued that people who do not accept their labels are tend to improve faster, which means people who accept the labels did not improve as fast. In a study carried out by Langer and Abelson, it shows that people who are labeled as mentally dis order tend to endure discrimination. They showed a video of young man telling working experience man to viewers and tell the viewers two version of the identity of the man. One is job applicant, the other one is mentally disorder. The identity of job applicant makes viewers feel positive about the man, but the mentally disorder makes people feel negative, even though it’s was the same video. Doctors tend to expect the people who visit them have some kind of mental disorder since only by one consulting them gives them the impression that one should be a patient. Rosenhan’s study could also show this argument. Doctors think people are mentally disorder because they
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