Diagnosis in Mental Health Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Diagnosis in Mental Health - Essay Example Thus resulting in the person becoming convinced this way also. Does this 'diagnostic label' reflect a truth about what psychiatric diagnosis actually is Example: An interim medical professional was training. The medical professional sat in a ward within approximate distance from the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist was interviewing a woman who was very depressed, her husband was with her. The husband made a comment such as, "We just want to know what is making her depressed, doctor." The psychiatrist dismissed this, said that they had to understand that she had a "depressive illness", that this was "an illness like any other kind of illness", and that they would be treating this (the 'treatment' consisted of antidepressants .) So that's it! What's causing this depression Is Depression causing this depression (or substitute 'schizophrenia', 'bipolar', etc). The doctor -usually a medical doctor, sometimes a clinical psychologist, is usually expected to judge whether the collection of feelings, experiences and behaviors you described and observed, fit into one of the categories in the psychiatric diagnostic manuals that the pr... bserves about the behaviour, and can elicit from the patient their feelings, experiences and behaviour - which usually happens within a short interview. There are alternatives to diagnostic classification in mental health. Reports suggest mental health professionals will start avoiding diagnosis and concentrating instead on what problems the person was experiencing, needed to deal with, and on the context in which these problems had arisen. There is a debate happening about the usefulness of diagnosis, particularly in clinical psychology, that rather than try to fit people into distinct diagnostic categories, given our states of psychological distress and disturbance as existing on a continuum, on a spectrum, using an approach called 'formulation'. This approach is used by some professionals, which, concentrates on the difficulties the person is experiencing and their particular circumstances and looks to help with these. This report will address diagnosis in mental health, advantages and disadvantages of diagnosis in mental health, self-fulfilling prophesy, problems with diagnosis and the social impact mental illness has on society. Definition The word diagnosis comes directly from the Greek, but with different meaning. To the Greeks a diagnosis is interpreted to mean a "discrimination, a distinguishing, or a discerning between two possibilities." History The history of medical diagnosis began in days of Imhotep in ancient Egypt and Hippocrates in ancient Greece. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, there are four diagnostic methods: inspection, auscultation-olfaction, interrogation, and palpation.[9] A Babylonian medical textbook, the Diagnostic Handbook written by Esagil-kin-apli (fl. 1069-1046 BC), introduced the use of empiricism, logic and