Ethical Diagnosis Of Depression

Diagnosis of depression can be a big challenge leading to ethical issues since it is mainly subjective and no accurate laboratory tests are available yet to diagnose it. To detect the decease doctors usually look for specific symptoms and ask patents about their mood, behavior, and day-to-day activities along with family psychological history. Also a specific depression-rating questionnaire can be used that aids in determining patient’s level of depression. Some lab tests can be used to check for other coexisting conditions such as thyroid disorder, or significant hormonal changes that are major contributors to depression, however no objective test available specifically for depression. Because of the nature of this illness high possibility …show more content…
“The use of psychotropic drugs by adult Americans increased 22 percent from 2001 to 2010, with one in five adults now taking at least one psychotropic medication. In 2010, Americans spent more than $16 billion on antipsychotics, $11 billion on antidepressants and $7 billion for drugs to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Nowadays it is easy to visit your primary-care doctor ask for a prescription of an antidepressant or other psychotropic drugs based on your believe that you are having depression, without evaluating the necessity of the drug therapy nor the stage of depression. "I would say at least half the folks who are being treated with antidepressants aren't benefiting from the active pharmacological effects of the drugs themselves but from a placebo effect," says Steven Hollon, PhD, a psychology professor at Vanderbilt University who has conducted extensive research on the effectiveness of antidepressants. "If people knew more, I think they would be a little less likely to go down the medication path than the psychosocial treatment path" (Smith). If there is a possibility for a patient to benefit from the placebo effect, it is more ethical to try less harmful and less expensive medications on such patient first, before prescribing expensive and in many ways harmful for health psychotropic ones. Also many times patient ignore or not even …show more content…
Therefore, culture influences individual’s life style, behavior and knowledge. According to cultural relativism theory, personality is mainly acquired thru culture. Hence, culture has a major impact on ways that a person interprets and responses to different environmental stressors meaning it is responsible for the subjective variations of illness. Different cultures interpret their symptoms differently, cultural belief influences the understanding of the disorder as real or imagenary. Cultural characteristics define collections of symptoms much more common in some societies than in others calling this “culture-bound syndromes “(NCBI). Cultural meanings of illness have real consequences on whether people look for medical help or not, what types of help they seek, pattern of healthcare utilization, also patient’s coping styles, provided social support, and how much stigma they attach to depression and mental health. Diversity inside the culture for example income, socioeconomic status and age must also be considered. The cultures of the health professional and the whole system also a defining factor in interpretation of the

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