Self-Diagnosis and Teaching Methods: A Preliminary Qualitative Analysis

Self-diagnosis is the appropriation of behavior as symptoms and labelling oneself with a disorder without consulting a professional. Teaching methods refer to frameworks through which the teacher organizes meaningful academic interactions with students and orients themselves and the class to the psychopathology paper. This study sought to explore both these ideas to see various elements of teaching and identified specific teaching methods and their relative contribution to self-diagnosis. It is a follow-up study to Ahmed and Stephen (2017) and used the same sample, which consisted of six psychology students. Thematic network analysis was used on the data obtained from semi-structured retrospective interviews. The results identified two specific teaching methods: 1) subjective-relational method, which refers to relating symptoms of pathology to real life experiences and 2) objective-systematic, which refers to a scientific, systematic disorder focused approach. The objective-systematic method was shown to be better at instilling academic maturity and reducing the distress associated to self-diagnosis. Briefing, which is orienting students to the potential pitfalls of self-diagnosis beforehand, and the practice of psychometric tests were identified as key elements of teaching that played a pivotal role in self-diagnosis. In-depth exploration of these specific teaching methods and its relationship to self-diagnosis is a key avenue for future research.