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Advantages
Identification of illness pattern clusters
Classifications simplify understanding of symptoms into something meaningful
Collection of statistics of ‘disease’ incidence
Allows appropriate treatment regimes and analysis of effectiveness of those treatments for particular disorders
Disadvantages
Labels not always appropriate and can result in lack of acknowledgement or appropriate support if client is diagnosed inaccurately or doesn’t fit into “a box”
Tendency to medicalise psychosocial and behavioural features of human behaviour
Can stigmatise people who have been diagnosed
Focus on illness not on health
Forces treatment providers to use language and approaches that seem “medical” e.g. symptoms, patients rather than client and problems with implications about power and control.