Hello Classmates,
Diagnosing Young Children
What effect might misdiagnosis have on their lives?
Psychiatrical misdiagnoses harm children since they are labeled with the conditions that are
incorrect and that treated with drugs for conditions that do not exist.
First, when children are
misdiagnosed, the underlying condition is often not treated and often goes unnoticed. There are
effects of labeling children as having physic conditions on their lives.
Labeling leads to
stigmatization, making children believe they will not succeed in life and are fated as a result of
their present psychiatric condition.
They are considered as hopeless.
They begin to show the
side effect of using the wrong medicines such as anxiety and develop learning disorders that
affect their lives at home and school. When a child is misdiagnosed with a condition such as
attention deficit at the age of five years, there is a high chance that he or she will undertake
special education classes. Also, years of unnecessary medication could lead to drug addiction
later in life (Barnhill, 2010, p. 22).
