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Do perceptions of dysfunction and normality mediate clinicians' judgements of adolescent antisocial behavior?
- Authors:
- KIRK Stuart A., HSIEH Derek H.
- Journal article citation:
- Social Service Review, 83(2), June 2009, pp.245-266.
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) requires clinicians making a judgment of mental disorder to first make complex mediating inferences about internal dysfunction and rule out the possibility that behaviours are normal reactions to a problematic environment. Responding to a case vignette in which the social context of antisocial behaviour was systematically varied, a sample of 1,500 social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists made judgments about the presence of mental disorder, internal dysfunction, and normality in the antisocial behaviour of a youth. Perceptions about the presence of internal dysfunction and normality are found to be related to judgments of mental disorder, but they do not fully mediate the relationship between the influence of social context and judgments of mental disorder.
Social context and social worker's judgement of mental disorder
- Authors:
- KIRK Stuart A., et al
- Journal article citation:
- Social Service Review, 73(1), March 1999, pp.82-104.
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
Examines biases in American social workers' assessment of antisocial youths based on the responses of students to clinical case vignettes describing youths engaging in antisocial behaviour. Respondents were to judge whether the described youth had a psychiatric or mental disorder. The contents of the vignettes were manipulated to suggest either internal dysfunction or a normal response to a difficult environment as the cause of the antisocial behaviour. Contrary to the claims of the critics, respondents generally appropriately distinguished, based on contextual information, between disordered and nondisordered youth. However, a minority of students did appear to display bias, primarily in the direction of underdiagnosis of disorder.