ZekeMacNeil: RemyDuron: Oddly enough, I would love to experience severe hallucinations and delusions temporarily. Unfortunately, my tendency to want to analyze the experience rationally as it is happening has made past experiments with hallucinogens rather lackluster.

Haven't you heard of acid?

Getting your hands on acid if you aren't friends with at least one old school hippy who happens to be an organic chemist is not easy. I can't even find pot on my own, I'm hopeless looking for acid.

I have done shrooms, salvia, and LSA. Salvia actually does give me delusions, but no visual or auditory hallucinations (I think someone is there who isn't, and that they are talking to me, but I never see or hear them). On shrooms I get some mild visuals, everything sort of pulses and "breaths" sometimes I see faint patterns of light across surfaces, and of course my patten recognition gets kicked up to ridiculous levels and i can spend 30 minutes staring at wood grain, but I've never seen, like, a person or a monster than wasn't there. No hallucination that could be mistaken for real. LSA, well, that was just like being nauseous for 12 hours. Bleh.

pdkl95: Flavivirus: The DSM-IV is a collection of symptoms. All diagnoses, in fact, are a collection of symptoms.

Wow, yet more evidence that psychs are arrogant farking asshats, with little understanding of data collection, deduction, and/or logic.

While many diagnosis in traditional medicine start as a "collection of symptoms", many do not stop there. Collecting a sample and culturing a bacteria is not a "symptom", it's real causative evidence. The real diagnosis isn't "sore throat" or "a cold", it's "strep throat by streptococcus". The diagnosis isn't "horrible pain in the legs", it's "a broken femur, as shown by this x-ray".

Yes, I know the field of mental health is in it's infancy, and we do not have the luxury of such real evidence-based testing in many cases. The absence of such real causative evidence does not raise "collections of symptoms" to a proper diagnosis, and it does not change the fact that you are guessing based on indirect observations.

A doctor is not simply reflecting your mood when they say "you have a depression."

What BS. I've not only had two doctors do that exact thing; one of which stated that reasoning explicitly. The conflating of the different meanings for the word "depression" happened a lot in conversations with that doctor in particular.

Your profession is far less rigorous that you seem to think.

Uh. . . maybe, just maybe, psychological diseases are much more complex than "normal" diseases and psychiatrists don't understand the causes because NO ONE does. The brain is ridiculously complex and really it was only in the second half of the 20th century that we made great strides in studying it.

LegalizeThoughtCrime: I am Napoleon, and so is my wife.

Ah, a classic case of Folie a Deux

ZekeMacNeil: RemyDuron: Oddly enough, I would love to experience severe hallucinations and delusions temporarily. Unfortunately, my tendency to want to analyze the experience rationally as it is happening has made past experiments with hallucinogens rather lackluster.

Haven't you heard of acid?

Acid is like a very mild schizophrenic episode. They are really not alike.

/speak from experience; diagnosed as bipolar with schizo-affective disorder
//doctors at the county (2001) said I was the worst case they had ever seen and that I probably wasn't going to make it back

Helen_Arigby 2009-07-02 01:50:50 PM
While this is good news, the fact that two supposedly distinct disorders are related only underscores my belief that the DSM IV is a big ol' book of symptoms, not diagnoses. Did you know that back in the day, doctors would diagnose patients with fever? Not as in "Susie has a fever, indicating this or that illness" but as in "Susie has a fever, that's her problem".

"Doctor, doctor! My daughter's skin is burning hot and she insists she's cold whenever she isn't raving about the flying elephants only she can see!"
"Well, ma'am, it seems your daughter has... *drumroll*... a FEVER!"
"Gee, thanks, doc. Any other statements of the obvious you'd care to make?"

This is roughly parallel to:

"Doctor, doctor! Nothing gives me joy in life and I spend a lot of time fantasizing about killing myself when I'm not locked in an emotionless ennui!"
"Well, ma'am, it seems you have... *drumroll*... a case of DEPRESSION!"
"Gee, thanks, doc. I never could've figured that out for myself."
"Have you considered making yourself a cup of tea when you feel bad?"*

Someday, maybe a hundred or two hundred years from now, people will look back and shake their heads. They'll also wonder how anyone with a severe disorder survived.

*An ex-therapist of mine seriously suggested this as a treatment for when I had an "episode". Because when you're curled in a corner screaming with causeless misery, nothing cheers you up like standing there waiting for the farking kettle to boil.

/fark shrinks
//I can state the obvious for a hundred and fifty an hour, too!

While I agree with your statement concerning the DSM-IV, I must caution you that, as a psychologist myself, I will admit that a significant percentage of the population fail to see what you call "obvious", hence the reason they are sitting in my waiting room nine hours a day. Most people never learn to "cope" with the "obvious" factions of life, thus rendering them incapable of proper function, which leads me to wonder that had you no access to one, would your situation be different now?

/just sayin
//love my job

Yeah, well, you might be Boney, but I'm Lord Nelson. And Horatio Hornblower, too.

Oh for the love. I guess somebody MAY have said it but I'm not sitting through the thread and apparently humanz need things repeated a JILLION times.

SCHIZOPHRENIA !=MPD.
SCHIZOPHRENIA !=MPD.
SCHIZOPHRENIA !=MPD.

Dictionary.com, subby. It is your friend.

pdkl95: Flavivirus: The DSM-IV is a collection of symptoms. All diagnoses, in fact, are a collection of symptoms.

Wow, yet more evidence that psychs are arrogant farking asshats, with little understanding of data collection, deduction, and/or logic.

While many diagnosis in traditional medicine start as a "collection of symptoms", many do not stop there. Collecting a sample and culturing a bacteria is not a "symptom", it's real causative evidence. The real diagnosis isn't "sore throat" or "a cold", it's "strep throat by streptococcus". The diagnosis isn't "horrible pain in the legs", it's "a broken femur, as shown by this x-ray".

Yes, I know the field of mental health is in it's infancy, and we do not have the luxury of such real evidence-based testing in many cases. The absence of such real causative evidence does not raise "collections of symptoms" to a proper diagnosis, and it does not change the fact that you are guessing based on indirect observations.

A doctor is not simply reflecting your mood when they say "you have a depression."

What BS. I've not only had two doctors do that exact thing; one of which stated that reasoning explicitly. The conflating of the different meanings for the word "depression" happened a lot in conversations with that doctor in particular.

Your profession is far less rigorous that you seem to think.

Perhaps the problem lies with your doctors rather than the profession itself. Your use of the word "psychs" likely underscores your leanings, as only "anti-psychs" use this type of language.

Diagnosis is the attempt to understand the nature of something. Ie) A cluster of symptoms becomes "gastrointestinal ulcers", or pain in the leg becomes "fracture of femur". The collection of evidence and symptoms leads to the diagnosis, but even a fracture of a femur can in fact be something else - was there cancerous erosion leading to the fracture? How about a nutritional deficiency that led to bone weakness. The fracture itself can be a symptom of another diagnosis. Do not kid yourself into thinking that a test like an X-ray or a blood culture is the be-all-end-all of diagnosis.

Regardless, you will likely never read this, but my profession is well into the science portion of what we do. You might want to read up on it sometime, rather than using L Ron's cookbook.