During the 1950s and 1960s, psychiatric classification systems were widely criticized. Discuss some of the reasons for this criticism

Answer:

(1) low reliability and interrater consistency; (2) the ideas that people who are diagnosed as mentally ill actually are having "problems in living" and are not "sick"; (3) the problems of self-fulfilling prophecies: those who are diagnosed live up to the expectations of the "sick" role. Patients may be stigmatized by being labeled.