Post Traumatic Stress Scenarios

In the mental health profession, the variability of symptoms has an impact on misdiagnosing clients, that can’t be overlooked. An example of how the variability of symptoms can lead to misdiagnosis is with the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after a traumatic brain injury. For example, memory gaps resulting from coma and post traumatic amnesia have the same characteristics Personality change, including impulsiveness, reduced insight, rigid thinking, reduced motivation, and impaired learning and concentration resulting from traumatic brain injury, may also cause some complaints to be mislabeled as a PTSD symptom (Sumpter, & Mcmillan, 2005). However, how a person processes information from life’s circumstances also varies.

The given information: there is a 51- year old homeless black woman misdiagnosed with schizophrenia; this diagnosis qualifies her to receive Social Security Insurance (SSI) for financial support, and Section 8 for housing. Her symptoms are more associated with a client suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD). The moral and ethical dilemma the social worker faces, is that an accurate diagnosis would disqualify the client to receive assistance under SSI. Resulting in client losing financial benefits; which could also lead her to lose Section 8 Housing. This would place the client back into the situation she received the diagnosis for to avoid being homeless in the first place. The social injustices that they from marginalized populations and marginalized communities find it easier to slap a label on a person, than to address the real needs of the people in those communities. For instance, blacks and other minority groups have a need for affordable housing, access to medical benefits and better wages. This could be remedied by providing better education and (or) technical skill training. In addition, if a mental health condition exists a proper diagnosis and therapy can enable a person in becoming

The is another ethical dilemma in misdiagnosing clients that involves the doctors receiving compensation for issuing prescriptions to clients for medication. This makes it easy to diagnose a woman of color of a mental illness connecting her with public assistance even if it’s the wrong diagnosis. The stigma involved with being labeled as a result of misdiagnosis. Recent literature and research have substantiated that pharmaceutical have given doctor’s compensation that has impacted the prescribed medical devices, medication choices (Moynihan & Cassels 2006). This would influence a doctor to be more willing to provide a prescription even if it’s not necessary. The interest converges when there is also a benefit in it for the client. In like fashion children are another marginalized group that’s easily labeled and diagnosed which was a sense of great controversy in a New York Times article studied in Abnormal Psychology. The compensation psychiatrists received for pediatric diagnosis lead to more children being prescribed more powerful atypical, and antipsychotic medication (Harris, 2007) Equally, there is some credence the fact that many medical disorders manifest themselves psychological symptoms (Walker III,