This could mean that a man who is depressed may be misdiagnosed simply because he doesn’t really show how he feels. Research has shown that men and women react to situations differently and that women tend to show more emotion. Sub-cultures like gender provide the same problem. It is hard to classify the symptoms of a mood disorder in a world of so many different cultures and beliefs. A culture where emotion is frowned upon may see an individual from a more emotional culture as depressed when they are not. Studies have found that some cultures rely on showing lots of emotion like grieving, whereas others see it as a bad thing. The diagnosis of depression has problems with validity because it can’t necessarily be generalised to every culture. Information from patients is often unreliable due to problems with embarrassment, wanting to be likeable and so on.Ī common problem related to this is the issue of culture. A person might not necessarily say the same thing to two different professionals about their symptoms and this can again lead to misdiagnosis. Not only can the conclusions of a professional provide a problem, but the information given by a patient can also pose a risk with reliability. A person’s symptoms are easily open to interpretation by a professional which can be a problem when diagnosing depression, because it may lead to serious misdiagnosis of an individual. This is a specific type of reliability which, in this case, looks at whether two people would come to the same conclusion about an individual. One of the main problems with diagnosing depression in individuals is inter-rater reliability. To explain the importance of both reliability and validity I am going to write about the affect they have on the classification and diagnosis of depression.
Validity ensures that an experiment can be generalised (external validity) and that it measures what it sets out to measure. Reliability is important to make sure something can be replicated and that the findings will be the same if the experiment was done again. They help to ensure that an experiment is credible and can be used in Psychology. Reliability and validity are both very important in psychology.
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