Developmental Psychology - Clinical (Ind diff)

Question 1

What are some individual difference in diagnosing disorders (anorexia and schizo)

Answer 1

-Diagnosing patient
-Culture-bound syndromes
-Diverse symptoms
-Not everyone develops AN
-Increased diagnoses
-Cultural ideals

Question 2

Race and culture when making diagnoses

Answer 2

Diagnosing
-Behaviour common in one culture can be interpreted differently by clinician if from a different culture to patient.
OR patient may be less likely to share symptoms because of cultural shame felt.

Question 3

Culture-bound syndromes

Answer 3

-Disorders only found in one culture, not universally
Culture-bound syndromes challenge use of ICD and DSM, these are intended to be scientific and universal systems for diagnosing mental health disorders, but do not contain those specific to one culture, viewing them rather as localised manifestation of anxiety or depression

Question 4

Diverse symptoms when diagnosing patients

Answer 4

-Schizophrenia symptoms are diverse and not same for everyone
-Some might argue that the biological view of schizophrenia is unlikely to be a complete one as there are likely to be different factors associated with disorder developing that can account for subtypes and presentation of symptoms

Question 5

Not everyone develops AN

Answer 5

-Cultural images and influences something everyone exposed to but not everyone develops AN
Other factors must make people more vulnerable to images than others
Research has found there are personality factors associated with diagnoses of anorexia (e.g. evidence has shown that patients with anorexia score highly on measures of perfectionism)

Question 6

Increased diagnosis

Answer 6

-Originally only in western cultures and rare in eastern but diagnosis has increased worldwide since 1970s, which coincides with increased reach of western values into eastern cultures through media (Iancu et al (1994))
-cultural values may have significant impact on development of eating disorders

Question 7

Cultural Ideals Hoek et al (2005-06)

Answer 7

-Seen as culturally acceptable to be overweight
Found overall incidence of anorexia much lower, no cases reported in black population but in white/ mixed race were comparable with US, Influence of cultural ideals is strong even when immersed in culture where a large size is acceptable, cultural norm of smaller body may have effect on individuals mental health
-Culture values large body size, woman put on weight in order to become more attractive to gain a partner. When relationship encounters problems she lost weight to become less attractive. When emigrated to Netherlands woman continued to lose weight to fit in with cultural ideals and then developed AN
Support theory that cultural ideals can have on body image and development of ED