Premium
The effect of social context on psychiatrists’ judgments of adolescent antisocial behavior
Author(s) -
Hsieh Derek K.,
Kirk Stuart A.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
journal of child psychology and psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.652
H-Index - 211
eISSN - 1469-7610
pISSN - 0021-9630
DOI - 10.1111/1469-7610.00172
Subject(s) - psychology , context (archaeology) , social environment , conduct disorder , set (abstract data type) , clinical psychology , developmental psychology , psychiatry , paleontology , political science , computer science , law , biology , programming language
Background: The DSM assumes that mental disorders can be identified by the presence of specific co‐occurring symptoms associated with certain duration and impaired functioning, independent of the social context in which symptoms occur. The validity of this assumption was tested using the judgments of experienced psychiatrists. We hypothesized that psychiatrists would judge an identical set of adolescent antisocial behaviors, meeting the DSM‐IV diagnostic criteria for conduct disorder, as indicative of mental disorder or non‐disordered problem‐in‐living, depending on the social context. Method: A representative sample of 483 psychiatrists in the United States read one of three experimentally manipulated vignettes depicting adolescent antisocial behavior and responded to questions concerning its nature, prognosis, cause, and response to various treatments. Results: Results supported our hypothesis. Under some circumstances, a youth may exhibit behaviors that meet the DSM‐IV diagnostic criteria for conduct disorder, but be judged by psychiatrists as not having a mental disorder. In addition, as predicted, psychiatrists reached different judgments about course, etiology, and treatment responsiveness when the identical behaviors occurred in different social contexts. Conclusions: The findings illuminate weaknesses in the validity of classification systems based on behavioral criteria independent of their social context. Implications of findings are discussed.