title: Psychiatric diagnosis: some implications for mental health nursing care.
abstract: Psychiatric diagnosis: some implications for mental health nursing care This article explores some of the functions of psychiatric diagnosis and the implications this has for the mental health nursing care that service users receive. It proposes that because a psychiatric diagnosis often fails to describe the individual's experience of mental distress it can be regarded as a categorization process that, while not necessarily intentionally, serves to maintain oppressive power relations within society. It does this by establishing and maintaining the parameters of normality and abnormality in a manner that reflects particular gender, culture and class biases. The American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders will be used to illustrate some of the inherent biases in the diagnostic process. Mental health nursing practice needs to demonstrate an awareness of the power relations inherent in any diagnostic process and make attempts to redress these at both the individual and sociopolitical levels. If mental health nursing practice is a patient-centred partnership, as many of our nursing standards suggest, then nursing's focus should be on the patient's experience rather than the psychiatric diagnosis with which the experience is attributed. Mental health nurses need to turn to service users to learn how best to help.
authors.affiliation: Senior Lecturer in Mental Health Nursing, Department of Psychological Medicine, Christchurch School of Medicine, Christchurch, New Zealand.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Crowe
mesh_terms: D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001294:Attitude to Health / Q000208:ethnology; D015982:Bias; D003142:Communication; D003953:Diagnosis-Related Groups / Q000145:classification*; D005783:Gender Identity; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000451:nursing / Q000523:psychology; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D018802:Patient-Centered Care / Q000379:methods; D011057:Politics; D011209:Power, Psychological; D011287:Prejudice; D011568:Psychiatric Nursing / Q000379:methods*; D012660:Semantics; D012926:Social Control, Formal; D012945:Social Values; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology