Cultural Identity, Personal Biases, and Diagnosis - Essay Example

  The above process helps reduce cases by which a clinician’s personal biases may influence the client’s diagnosis. For instance, if the clinician dealing with Marvin’s was a woman and had ever gone through the experiences faced by Marvin’s wife with a Black American Husband, this would wrongly influence the clinician’s diagnosis of Marvin’s case if she does not adequately consider Marvin’s developmental history that includes the experiences at work that shaped some of his bad behaviors and pessimistic attitude.

    Clinicians face culturally diverse clients in their professional endeavors. All these clients have a right to accurate diagnosis and treatment plans. In order to achieve this, as a professional clinician, I will work hard to develop culturally competent skills, attitude, and knowledge that will help me correctly interpret the client’s cultural identity. However, I will also seek help from a cultural consultant to reduce chances of biases and misdiagnosis. Secondly, I will make a critical evaluation of my personal cultural identity, attitudes, and beliefs concerning ethnic minorities because it is a factor that will largely affect my relationship with my clients.

Finally, I will always explore new strategies of getting information from clients because the traditional methods of interviewing clients may lack effectiveness and psychological tests may not be appropriate or adequate for some cases. Part of my new strategies may be to use an interpreter for a specific case that one is required; I may conduct family interviews, and make some modifications on the psychological tests to fit different cases.