Reliability of psychiatric diagnosis - Essay Example

This is contrary to the A.P.A, which calls for the need for uniformity of psychiatric diagnosis. Unreliability of psychiatric diagnosis affects a number of activities in the health sector. For example, it hinders research activities because research is possible if one has a clear understanding of the research topic. Researchers cannot research a certain mental condition if they have different information regarding the condition. Other scholarly works agree with this view that psychiatric diagnoses are unreliable at times.

In his article, Ahmed identifies some of the factors that contribute to unreliability. Level of expertise and experience of psychiatrists affects the conclusions they make about the condition of a patient. Most patients with mental disorders are not able to express themselves. Psychiatrists use patients' emotions to extract their medical conditions. The environment also influences the diagnosis of patients. The environment will affect a patient’s memory and anxiety. Most psychiatrists rely on presentations about other psychiatric cases to make conclusions (Aboraya 44).

These and other factors raise questions about the reliability of the diagnosis of psychiatrist cases. The A.P.A is one of the agencies that will agree with this line of thought. Fortunately, the A.P.A had discovered flaws in psychiatric diagnosis and developed the DSM. The manual is a guide to mental diagnosis of psychiatric cases, but it will never be functional due to modernization. Mental disorders keep on changing, and this change challenges Alix Spiegel’s opinion that the DSM is the solution to reliability of psychiatric diagnosis.

However, the DSM has helped. There are several sources of reference where psychiatrists refer to when diagnosing and attending to psychiatrist patients. Spitzer discovered the poor state of diagnosing psychiatric cases, which triggered his efforts towards developing the DSM. Aboraya acknowledges the role of DSM in improving the condition reliability of diagnosis. Aboraya says that if psychiatrists follow the criteria that the DSM suggests, reliability would improve significantly. He believes that there is still room for improving reliability.

However, psychiatric cases keep on changing, a condition that compromises the effectiveness of the DSM. It calls for the need of updating the DSM so that it can rhyme with the emerging issues. The essay has expressed concerns about reliability of diagnosis of various mental disorders. It is evident that differences in diagnosis compromise the quality of treatment given to psychiatric patients. DSM offers possible remedies to the problem of unreliability, but health practitioners bear great responsibility.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is a platform that will help them improve patient diagnosis. The question is whether they will ever develop a reliable system of diagnosing patients’conditions.