The effects of gender on diagnosis of psychological disturbance

This research examines the effect of patient gender on the detection of psychological disturbance. In Study 1, primary-care patients were requested to complete the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), a measure of nonpsychiatric psychological disturbance, prior to their consultation. The patient's GHQ score was compared with physician judgments about the level of disturbance in that patient (N = 1913). Although there were a similar number of GHQ high scorers among males and females, the physicians classified significantly more females than males as disturbed. The doctors classified as disturbed a larger proportion of nondisturbed women than nondisturbed men. In order to explore the behavior of recent medical graduates, Study 2 examined the detection behavior of interns in an outpatient department with 384 of their patients. The interns behaved in a similar manner to the primary-care physicians.