Classification and diagnosis of phobias AO1
- Created by: Sophiemelissa
- Created on: 27-05-16 07:12
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- Classification and diagnosis of phobic disorders
- Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM)
- A classification system of mental disorders containing typical symptoms for disorders and guidlines for diagnosis.
- Phobias are classed as anxiety disorders, with extreme anxiety
- Agoraphobia- a fear of being in places where it's difficult to escape
- Specific phobia- phobias of specific activities or objects
- Social phobias- phobias of situations involving other people
- Characteristics of clinical phobias
- 1. A marked or persistent fear that is unreasonable
- 2. Exposure to the phobias stimulus provokes an immediate anxiety response
- 3. The person recognises their fear is excessive or unreasonable,may be absent in childrenn
- 5.Avoidance anxiety and stress interfere 9th a persons normal routine
- 4. The phobic situation is avoided or endured with extreme anxiety
- 6.In individuals under 18, the duration must be 6months or more
- 7. The anxiety, panic attacks or phobic avoidance is not better accounted for by another mental disorder
- Issues of classification and diagnosis
- Reliability
- Reliability- the extent to hitch a diagnostic system produces reliable or accurate findings
- The consistency of a measuring interment such as. Questionnaireto assess Ho fearful a person is about certain objects etc
- Inter-rather reliability
- The extent to which to or more diagnosticians would arrive at the same conclusion for the same individual
- Brown (2001) identified 3 issues with low inter rate reliabilty
- Threshold issue- was sufficient anxiety caused
- Patient report of symptoms differs between interviews
- Interviewer sometimes makes errors
- Test-retest reliability
- Validity
- Validity concerns how accurate, meaningful and useful a diagnosis is
- When questioning validity we are asking the extent to which our system of diagnosing is reflecting the true nature of the problem; the prognosis
- If a diagnostic system produces unreliable inconsistent results over time then it cannot be valid.
- Descriptive validity
- To be valid patients diagnosed with different disorders should differ from each other
- Comorbidity
- Reduces descriptive validity as, if someone has 2 or more disorders it suggests the disorders are not actually separate from each other
- It suggests there is an overlap between the disorder and any given disorders as a result we can only assume that all phobic disorders are of the same severity
- Predictive validity
- If diagnosis leads to successful treatment then the diagnosis is seen as valid
- Concerned 9th the extent to which we can use the diagnosis to predict the outcomes for patients
- Reliability
- Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM)
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