For some reason that article gives off Scientology like vibes.

As an Uninsured American, I am of course immune to all of these new psychiatric diagnoses.

It still scares the farking shiat out of me. For example: The report also found almost 4,000 foster and non-foster care infants - under a year old - on Medicaid in five states were taking psychotropic drugs. Researchers said the risks these drugs pose to children are "not well understood". Infants. Less than one year old. On psychotropic medication. Infants. Less than one year old.

dahmers love zombie: I cannot conceive of a single legitimate medical reason for this.

There isn't unless they just don't want to deal with them.

Brave New World and 1984 sure are fighting for dominance in the beginning of the 21st century.

DSM 5 has Duke Nukem Forever Syndrome.

If it officially adds a Procrastination Syndrome I won't have to work another day in my life.

Asa Phelps: dahmers love zombie: namegoeshere: As an Uninsured American, I am of course immune to all of these new psychiatric diagnoses.

It still scares the farking shiat out of me. For example: The report also found almost 4,000 foster and non-foster care infants - under a year old - on Medicaid in five states were taking psychotropic drugs. Researchers said the risks these drugs pose to children are "not well understood". Infants. Less than one year old. On psychotropic medication. Infants. Less than one year old.

I cannot conceive of a single legitimate medical reason for this.

My reaction to the alarmism in the article and in the quoted text is "I would like to see some specific examples".

link goes to another link that cites the studies, in footnotes

DS9?

That's just crazy.

Smoke weed erry day?

Some changes ... "It is proposed that the eight symptoms of Oppositional Defiant Disorder should be divided into the following categories: Angry/Irritable Mood; Defiant/Headstrong Behavior; and Vindictiveness."

And do you know why they are changing that? Because fark you, that's why.

you have a personality? that's a disorder, take these pills that will shorten your lifespan, kill your soul, but turn you into the cog we want you to be.

And to think... ICD-10 is coming too.

dahmers love zombie: namegoeshere: As an Uninsured American, I am of course immune to all of these new psychiatric diagnoses.

It still scares the farking shiat out of me. For example: The report also found almost 4,000 foster and non-foster care infants - under a year old - on Medicaid in five states were taking psychotropic drugs. Researchers said the risks these drugs pose to children are "not well understood". Infants. Less than one year old. On psychotropic medication. Infants. Less than one year old.

I cannot conceive of a single legitimate medical reason for this.

Crack babies and heavily abused infants could theoretically have a need for such medication to get over their shock trauma.

As an Aberrant American, I say bring on the meds.

You don't want yours? Fine, more for me. NOM NOM NOM

dahmers love zombie: namegoeshere: As an Uninsured American, I am of course immune to all of these new psychiatric diagnoses.

It still scares the farking shiat out of me. For example: The report also found almost 4,000 foster and non-foster care infants - under a year old - on Medicaid in five states were taking psychotropic drugs. Researchers said the risks these drugs pose to children are "not well understood". Infants. Less than one year old. On psychotropic medication. Infants. Less than one year old.

I cannot conceive of a single legitimate medical reason for this.

Kids have seizures.

Medications that treat seizures need to cross the blood-brain barrier. This makes them psychotropic.

So yes, there are perfectly reasonable explanations for why infants would be taking psychotropic drugs.

JasonOfOrillia: How do you shrink lead?

/And is it a real plum bum?

I normally wiz past many of the comments on Fark, but yours was particularly bizarre and irrelevant. Can you please, umm, explain?

Cyrusv10:

Purple monkey dishwasher.

I GOT BEANS IN MY POCKETS

Glenford: I used to work in an adolescent psychiatric unit. You know what Oppositional Defiance Disorder is? Adolescence. It has to be the biggest bullshiat diagnosis.

I was once told that pretty much everyone in prison has Antisocial Personality Disorder. This was said with a straight face by a mental health professional.

MindStalker: dahmers love zombie: namegoeshere: As an Uninsured American, I am of course immune to all of these new psychiatric diagnoses.

It still scares the farking shiat out of me. For example: The report also found almost 4,000 foster and non-foster care infants - under a year old - on Medicaid in five states were taking psychotropic drugs. Researchers said the risks these drugs pose to children are "not well understood". Infants. Less than one year old. On psychotropic medication. Infants. Less than one year old.

I cannot conceive of a single legitimate medical reason for this.

Crack babies and heavily abused infants could theoretically have a need for such medication to get over their shock trauma.

Nail on the head. Or, at least that is what we have been told whenever a kid arrives in our home with a baggie of prescription bottles in the diaper bag. The health department personnel aren't equipped to do much more than medicate. There's a whole lot of people out in the world that just want the baby to be quiet. Who cares if the baby needs to develop? Just be quiet baby.

BlippityBleep: you have a personality? that's a disorder, take these pills that will shorten your lifespan, kill your soul, but turn you into the cog we want you to be.

By definition of the word, a disorder is something that causes great distress. If the symptoms in the DSM are not greatly affecting ones life the DSM does not apply. If something in ones life is causing great distress that is worthy of trying to remedy, no?

Not to say some of the things in the DSM 5 might be crossing the line. Things like being able to add psychosomatic diagnoses to any physiologic diagnoses is a slippery slope. (have MS? Well now you have MS and psychosomatic illness, because come on, not all your fatigue is caused by MS!)

Peer review and politics are the same thing, dummies.

Also, expanding the range of mental abnormalities or quirks covered by the DSM doesn't mean every abnormality must be medicated. The DSM seeks to cover the whole spectrum, not to imply that all parts of that spectrum are necessarily negative nor to to prescribe treatment to those which are.

AliceBToklasLives: Glenford: I used to work in an adolescent psychiatric unit. You know what Oppositional Defiance Disorder is? Adolescence. It has to be the biggest bullshiat diagnosis.

I was once told that pretty much everyone in prison has Antisocial Personality Disorder. This was said with a straight face by a mental health professional.

Antisocial Personalty Disorder is what Sociopaths and Psychopaths are. It's characterized by the fact that either you don't care if you hurt someone or actually go out of your way to do so. IE pretty much a lot of guys in prison. The guy might have been using hyperbole but he is right.

Doug Stanhope on Prescription Drugs pretty much covers most of it in my opinion.

What are we (as a society) supposed to do when there is no sane way to deal with all the crazy shiat going on? When does "acting like everything is as fine as it was in the 90s" become the definition of mental illness, instead of the baseline for mental health we try to medicate to?

/you only know you're sane if the world drives you crazy

PsiChick: Yeeeah, I think it was pretty obvious when 4 came out that the political infighting is really shooting the entire field in the foot.

BigLuca: Some changes ... "It is proposed that the eight symptoms of Oppositional Defiant Disorder should be divided into the following categories: Angry/Irritable Mood; Defiant/Headstrong Behavior; and Vindictiveness."

And do you know why they are changing that? Because fark you, that's why.

Same with Asperger's. The disorder has major and important differences from autism (especially that people with AS crave human contact\communication while autists may or may not), but why are they changing it? Because fark you, that's why.

This is not how you help people.

Yeah I heard about that and don't really understand it. They are just lumping it into Autism Spectrum Disorder. I don't know the back story, but it seems like it is more of a coding and billing deal. I sense politics afoot.

MrBentor: And to think... ICD-10 is coming too.

And the billing nightmare of every claim either being paid automatically or denied in error will cause massive employment gains as everyone rushes to fix this!

dahmers love zombie: I cannot conceive of a single legitimate medical reason for this.

Phenobarbitol is considered a psychotropic medication, and is commonly used to treat substance withdrawals in newborns.

/off the top of my head.

Glenford: BigLuca: Some changes ... "It is proposed that the eight symptoms of Oppositional Defiant Disorder should be divided into the following categories: Angry/Irritable Mood; Defiant/Headstrong Behavior; and Vindictiveness."

And do you know why they are changing that? Because fark you, that's why.

I used to work in an adolescent psychiatric unit. You know what Oppositional Defiance Disorder is? Adolescence. It has to be the biggest bullshiat diagnosis.

My mother that works with abused kids in the Wilder fountation disagrees. The think is that it does get overdiagnoised but Oppositional Defiance Disorder is where the kid will refuse to do even the simplest thing told to do even if it benefits them. Ask them if they want to eat and they will argue with you that they're not hungry so you give up. Then 30 minutes later they will start screaming at you that their hungry and why didn't you feed them.

dahmers love zombie: I cannot conceive of a single legitimate medical reason for this.


I'm sure GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, AstraZeneca and the other pharmaceutical companies could conceive of several billion monetary reasons.

Because everyone is sick and even if you're not, there's a pill for that too.

Oppositional Defiance Disorder: "Why don't you quit bein' a batch and pill me up!"

GBmanNC: BlippityBleep: you have a personality? that's a disorder, take these pills that will shorten your lifespan, kill your soul, but turn you into the cog we want you to be.

By definition of the word, a disorder is something that causes great distress. If the symptoms in the DSM are not greatly affecting ones life the DSM does not apply. If something in ones life is causing great distress that is worthy of trying to remedy, no?

I have a problem with this when it comes to children. Because children cannot be in charge of their own healthcare. So perhaps it is causing great distress - to the parents. But perhaps it is not due to an organic disorder, but shiatty parenting. As has been said, Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Or, "angry/irritable mood", "defiant/headstrong behavior"... Now no longer any fault of the parent, as evidenced by this handy diagnosis and these helpful pills.

Goddamn farking autocorrect...

dahmers love zombie: I cannot conceive of a single legitimate medical reason for this.

Those infants were babbling incoherently, grasping at imaginary objects in mid-air, and soiling themselves constantly. Most of them are so disconnected they can't even stand. They clearly need the meds.
=Smidge=

They told me i was crazy, but i showed them!

/the bodies

PsiChick: If it wasn't, I have a feeling the news articles would involve something resembling a reason instead of just basic commentary. That, or, "Infuriated shrinks take to streets after being ridiculously misrepresented by media" would suddenly be a story.



/hot like radiation therapy

Kumana Wanalaia: Cyrusv10:

Purple monkey dishwasher.

chocolate chip ice cream

/Interesting that we are on a DSM thread - bring out the crazies

Pribar: See here's the thing, I'm naked, lying in bed typing this on a laptop while eating mac and cheese and guzzling red poweraid, all the while trying to decide whether I'm horny enough to go look up some porn, so all in all my opinion on psychiatric matters really shouldn't count for much....


/btw you are welcome for that mental image
//just doing my thing to make everyones life a little weirder

GBmanNC: BlippityBleep: you have a personality? that's a disorder, take these pills that will shorten your lifespan, kill your soul, but turn you into the cog we want you to be.

By definition of the word, a disorder is something that causes great distress. If the symptoms in the DSM are not greatly affecting ones life the DSM does not apply. If something in ones life is causing great distress that is worthy of trying to remedy, no?

Not to say some of the things in the DSM 5 might be crossing the line. Things like being able to add psychosomatic diagnoses to any physiologic diagnoses is a slippery slope. (have MS? Well now you have MS and psychosomatic illness, because come on, not all your fatigue is caused by MS!)

there are times when distress is a normal response. look at the primary education system in the US. the kids are bored stiff and act out because their entire day is about strict reading and math, without science, art, history, or any type of mix. it's perfectly normal to lose attention with such a complete lack of stimulation. but no, kids must have ADD, ADHD, Aswhatever, or any smattering of bullshiat out there. not saying that some kids have legitimate issues, but there is institutional crap going on that is having huge negative effects on development.

greasybastard: Is there a good way to jump the paywall?

If you mean for NY Times articles, you just need cookies enabled.

But for me, that's not an option, cant say that with more clarity. Me going legit would be like Jar-Jar with speech therapy

dahmers love zombie: namegoeshere: As an Uninsured American, I am of course immune to all of these new psychiatric diagnoses.

It still scares the farking shiat out of me. For example: The report also found almost 4,000 foster and non-foster care infants - under a year old - on Medicaid in five states were taking psychotropic drugs. Researchers said the risks these drugs pose to children are "not well understood". Infants. Less than one year old. On psychotropic medication. Infants. Less than one year old.

I cannot conceive of a single legitimate medical reason for this.

All I can think of is infantile epilepsy, which is a very serious deal.

Smidge204: dahmers love zombie: I cannot conceive of a single legitimate medical reason for this.

Those infants were babbling incoherently, grasping at imaginary objects in mid-air, and soiling themselves constantly. Most of them are so disconnected they can't even stand. They clearly need the meds.
=Smidge=

Hey Post Signer! You're the worst. Knock it off.

Will religious belief finally be categorized as a subtype of Delusional Disorder?

Kali-Yuga: Will religious belief finally be categorized as a subtype of Delusional Disorder?

No, because for the vast majority of people it's not a delusion, just a socially enforced untrue idea. The brain doesn't distinguish between true and untrue verbal and visual inputs, it's the reason why fiction elicits emotion. Howver, the DSM has accounted for legitimately "prophetic" nutters since the very beginning.

thatboyoverthere: Glenford: BigLuca: Some changes ... "It is proposed that the eight symptoms of Oppositional Defiant Disorder should be divided into the following categories: Angry/Irritable Mood; Defiant/Headstrong Behavior; and Vindictiveness."

And do you know why they are changing that? Because fark you, that's why.

I used to work in an adolescent psychiatric unit. You know what Oppositional Defiance Disorder is? Adolescence. It has to be the biggest bullshiat diagnosis.

My mother that works with abused kids in the Wilder fountation disagrees. The think is that it does get overdiagnoised but Oppositional Defiance Disorder is where the kid will refuse to do even the simplest thing told to do even if it benefits them. Ask them if they want to eat and they will argue with you that they're not hungry so you give up. Then 30 minutes later they will start screaming at you that their hungry and why didn't you feed them.

Newsflash: kids can be assholes too.

So the leader of the DSM IV is butthurt that his baby is being significantly revised?

Color me shocked.

Aspergers is a joke diagnosis 90% of the time. In my experience, the vast majority of people claiming to have Aspergers are just socially awkward people who self-diagnosed using the DSM online, and have no basis for their claims. If it actually applies, we're still going to call the diagnosis Aspergers.

Just like we still call some people sadists and psychopaths, even though those terms have technically been removed, in a forensic setting, you will see them all the time.

/everyone's blowing this whole thing completely out of proportion on all sides

whither_apophis: I'm waiting for DSM 3D to come out on blu-ray

It will be a benefit to all. Just imagine how much more instructional the Dick Sucking Manual will be in 3D, that giant penis coming right at you.

Kenny B: boundaries of psychiatry to define as mentally ill tens of millions of people now considered normal

Democrats?

They had to make up for all those Republicans who ended up off of the clinical list when they took homosexuality out of the DSM in 1974...

Great Janitor: Will D.S.M. 5 pick up the open ended plot lines that D.S.M. 4 failed to resolve?

Yes, and it reveals that everyone is now autistic.


/Is there a cure for ennui
//That doesn't come in pill form

wildcardjack:
/Is there a cure for ennui
//That doesn't come in pill form

Fairly certain that meth and cocaine can come in a convenient powder form. LSD can be put in a squirt gun.

PonceAlyosha: No, because for the vast majority of people it's not a delusion, just a socially enforced untrue idea.

de·lu·sion

3: Psychiatry a fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact

Even the current DSM has a disclaimer after the diagnostic criteria of Delusional Disorder stating that religious belief is exempt even though it meets all the standards.

Like all mental illnesses, there is a spectrum representing a range of severity, comprising relatively "severe" mental disorders through to relatively "mild and nonclinical deficits".

You have your "high functioning" people which comprise the vast majority of believers, and you have the fundamentalists on the other end of the spectrum.

The 4chan Psychiatrist: So the leader of the DSM IV is butthurt that his baby is being significantly revised?

Color me shocked.

Aspergers is a joke diagnosis 90% of the time. In my experience, the vast majority of people claiming to have Aspergers are just socially awkward people who self-diagnosed using the DSM online, and have no basis for their claims. If it actually applies, we're still going to call the diagnosis Aspergers.

Just like we still call some people sadists and psychopaths, even though those terms have technically been removed, in a forensic setting, you will see them all the time.

/everyone's blowing this whole thing completely out of proportion on all sides

Actually sadistic personality disorder is unofficial recognized. The reason it isn't officially is that you get the insanity defense for people that know what they are doing s wrong and can stop themselves but don't want to.

A Terrible Human: For some reason that article gives off Scientology like vibes.

You have a point there.

thatboyoverthere: The 4chan Psychiatrist: So the leader of the DSM IV is butthurt that his baby is being significantly revised?

Color me shocked.

Aspergers is a joke diagnosis 90% of the time. In my experience, the vast majority of people claiming to have Aspergers are just socially awkward people who self-diagnosed using the DSM online, and have no basis for their claims. If it actually applies, we're still going to call the diagnosis Aspergers.

Just like we still call some people sadists and psychopaths, even though those terms have technically been removed, in a forensic setting, you will see them all the time.

/everyone's blowing this whole thing completely out of proportion on all sides

Actually sadistic personality disorder is unofficial recognized. The reason it isn't officially is that you get the insanity defense for people that know what they are doing s wrong and can stop themselves but don't want to.

That is what feminist groups claimed, but the contrary is actually the case. I've seen rapists paroled where some of the evaluating psychiatrists claimed he was a sadistic PDer, and the defense argued that it's not real, seeing as it only briefly appeared in the DSM III-R. Instead of going into a forensic hospital, the people are released into the public, where they inevitably rape again.

As for the insanity defense, I tend to think their fears are unfounded, as their using the insanity defense for sadistic PD would pretty much sentence the person to life in a forensic hospital. Further, Personality Disorders aren't grounds for an insanity defense under the current legal definition of insanity.

thatboyoverthere: AliceBToklasLives: Glenford: I used to work in an adolescent psychiatric unit. You know what Oppositional Defiance Disorder is? Adolescence. It has to be the biggest bullshiat diagnosis.

I was once told that pretty much everyone in prison has Antisocial Personality Disorder. This was said with a straight face by a mental health professional.

Antisocial Personalty Disorder is what Sociopaths and Psychopaths are. It's characterized by the fact that either you don't care if you hurt someone or actually go out of your way to do so. IE pretty much a lot of guys in prison. The guy might have been using hyperbole but he is right.

Sure - But (A) of course criminals are anti-social - that's why they are in prison; it's sort of like saying everyone who goes to Applebees has "Poor Taste Disorder"; (B) such a diagnosis is fine if it's used to treat people who are truly ill, but I worry that such a diagnosis may be used to mitigate the criminal's responsibility.

/sure "society" is part of the problem (there is a very strong poverty/crime correlation) - but so is the dude who blew away the 7-11 clerk to get $40

cookiefleck: PonceAlyosha: Kali-Yuga: Will religious belief finally be categorized as a subtype of Delusional Disorder?

No, because for the vast majority of people it's not a delusion, just a socially enforced untrue idea. The brain doesn't distinguish between true and untrue verbal and visual inputs, it's the reason why fiction elicits emotion. Howver, the DSM has accounted for legitimately "prophetic" nutters since the very beginning.

Oh well, we've got someone here that died, saw nothing and came back to report on his findings.. much like Christianity you can't say there is nothingness

By that criteria I put out it justifies literally anything that's not pathologically untrue. From the pettiest things to anything grand and measurable and mathematically proven but not directly observed by YOU. Religion was just what that guy brought up. To say "delusion" where anything is unverifiable/untrue is just stupidity.

I'm still waiting for someone to classify introversion as a disorder. i mean, how could anyone enjoy him/herself in low stimulus environments? And what about that ability to concentrate for longer periods? That's just freaky. There should be a pill to ensure that they are happy, extroverted people.

That or people need to stop whining about how you need "real team players who are also good at working alone." Any HR person who uses that to describe a preferred candidate for a job opening should be kneecapped. What you are basically doing is using buzzwords to ask if someone would like to check if (s)he isn't completely socially inept before applying for the job. While we or at least, I, are on the topic, stop trying to equate someone playing team sports with some arcane ability to work with a few others on a report.

/I see this way to often
//If someone could use a (almost graduated) Work-, Organisation-, Personnel psychologist, send me a message
///The Netherlands only (unless the payment is really good)

Maladaptive behavior. If you wonder if you're crazy you're sane and therefore not crazy.

HotIgneous Intruder: Maladaptive behavior. If you wonder if you're crazy you're sane and therefore not crazy.

That's all predicated on self awareness being the most advanced/integrated/highly evolved cognitive function. This is supported by neurological structure and metabolism.

Is rolling in his grave...

I've diagnosed someone with Sour Grapes Syndrome.

AliceBToklasLives: thatboyoverthere: AliceBToklasLives: Glenford: I used to work in an adolescent psychiatric unit. You know what Oppositional Defiance Disorder is? Adolescence. It has to be the biggest bullshiat diagnosis.

I was once told that pretty much everyone in prison has Antisocial Personality Disorder. This was said with a straight face by a mental health professional.

Antisocial Personalty Disorder is what Sociopaths and Psychopaths are. It's characterized by the fact that either you don't care if you hurt someone or actually go out of your way to do so. IE pretty much a lot of guys in prison. The guy might have been using hyperbole but he is right.

Sure - But (A) of course criminals are anti-social - that's why they are in prison; it's sort of like saying everyone who goes to Applebees has "Poor Taste Disorder"; (B) such a diagnosis is fine if it's used to treat people who are truly ill, but I worry that such a diagnosis may be used to mitigate the criminal's responsibility.

/sure "society" is part of the problem (there is a very strong poverty/crime correlation) - but so is the dude who blew away the 7-11 clerk to get $40

Problem is that would mean we would have to move away from a retribution style of criminal justice system to a rehabilitation style and that will never happen because that would be 'soft on crime.' Instead he just lock up a bunch of antisocial people with other antisocial people and hope that somehow that will fix things.

Mentalpatient87: Oppositional Defiance Disorder: "Why don't you quit bein' a batch and pill me up!"

I'd pill them up with a boot in the ass. Now go take that shovel and start digging.

* few hours later*

Why is there loose dirt on my ground? Put that dirt back in that hole.

Rinse and repeat until the kid is too tired to be defiant. Repeat as necessary until brat catches on that defiance only bring useless, pain inducing, back breaking and humiliating labor.

thatboyoverthere: AliceBToklasLives: Glenford: I used to work in an adolescent psychiatric unit. You know what Oppositional Defiance Disorder is? Adolescence. It has to be the biggest bullshiat diagnosis.

I was once told that pretty much everyone in prison has Antisocial Personality Disorder. This was said with a straight face by a mental health professional.

Antisocial Personalty Disorder is what Sociopaths and Psychopaths are. It's characterized by the fact that either you don't care if you hurt someone or actually go out of your way to do so. IE pretty much a lot of guys in prison. The guy might have been using hyperbole but he is right.

There's a fairly long list of things on the sociopath checklist, and you need more than just one or two to qualify as one. People can be conditioned to not care about others by just being in an uncaring environment long enough, but it doesn't make them a sociopath.

Smeggy Smurf: Why is there loose dirt on my ground? Put that dirt back in that hole.

Rinse and repeat until the kid is too tired to be defiant. Repeat as necessary until brat catches on that defiance only bring useless, pain inducing, back breaking and humiliating labor.


Um yeah...That's a brainwashing technique done by Cults and those 'schools' that breakdown a kid's psych until they are pretty much lifeless.
/The treatment for ODD is therapy and getting the kid to realize that acting like that is wrong and will get them killed.

They're defective anyway. Let 'em die. But first, dig the new holes for the fence I'm putting in.

AliceBToklasLives: Glenford: I used to work in an adolescent psychiatric unit. You know what Oppositional Defiance Disorder is? Adolescence. It has to be the biggest bullshiat diagnosis.

I was once told that pretty much everyone in prison has Antisocial Personality Disorder. This was said with a straight face by a mental health professional.

Well that sounds like we are doing a good job of keeping the antisocial folks from the rest of us.

kidsizedcoffin: ..... LSD can be put in a squirt gun.

Many critics assume unfairly that D.S.M.-5 is shilling for drug companies. This is not true. The mistakes are rather the result of an intellectual conflict of interest; experts always overvalue their pet area and want to expand its purview, until the point that everyday problems come to be mislabeled as mental disorders. Arrogance, secretiveness, passive governance and administrative disorganization have also played a role.

In other words, "They're not greedy, just egotistical with a splash of incompetent and unaware of it." Surely there's an entry in the new edition for that....

BlippityBleep: Brave New World and 1984 sure are fighting for dominance in the beginning of the 21st century.

Obama 2012. Forward.

NIXON YOU DOLT!!!!!: dahmers love zombie: I cannot conceive of a single legitimate medical reason for this.

Phenobarbitol is considered a psychotropic medication, and is commonly used to treat substance withdrawals in newborns.

/off the top of my head.

That was my first guess--treating withdrawal symptoms in neonates. And the "why" would be because sometimes if you don't treat withdrawal symptoms of people addicted to drugs and withdrawing they do icky things like...die.

AliceBToklasLives: Glenford: I used to work in an adolescent psychiatric unit. You know what Oppositional Defiance Disorder is? Adolescence. It has to be the biggest bullshiat diagnosis.

I was once told that pretty much everyone in prison has Antisocial Personality Disorder. This was said with a straight face by a mental health professional.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't antisocial disorder mean you just want to see the world burn and don't give a fark about anyone else? If everyone in prison had it, then there'd be no point in releasing anyone ever.

/Now if he meant that the prison environment breeds antisocial disorder, that would make sense....

GORDON: Obama 2012. Forward.

Sounds like you're suffering from Obama Derangement Syndrome.

BigJake: Smidge204: dahmers love zombie: I cannot conceive of a single legitimate medical reason for this.

Those infants were babbling incoherently, grasping at imaginary objects in mid-air, and soiling themselves constantly. Most of them are so disconnected they can't even stand. They clearly need the meds.
=Smidge=

Hey Post Signer! You're the worst. Knock it off.

Don't listen to him, Smidge. One day, you're going to State with that post-sign game you've got.

Jixa: dahmers love zombie: I cannot conceive of a single legitimate medical reason for this.


I'm sure GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, AstraZeneca and the other pharmaceutical companies could conceive of several billion monetary reasons.

Because everyone is sick and even if you're not, there's a pill for that too.

I see my wife beat me to your post. Our oldest son started on risperdal (and more and stronger drugs from there) at age 5, at the time we were told by the school board that if we did not put him on medication then they would bar him from the school system in Austin Texas. Today he is 14 and the cocktail of meds he takes twice daily would likely overdose me....fyi i'm built like a 6 foot sumo wrestler. We started off with doctors labling him as Autistic/Asbergers and he has graduated into full blown schitzophrenia and a laundry list of other disorders that scare the hell out of group homes whenever we try to get him onto thier list. Despite all these issues, and despite showing signs of severe behavioral disorders starting at age 4, at age 1-3 he was just a baby, a bit different when we compared notes with other parents, but just a baby none the less. If, at age 1 or 2 some doctor had told me to put him on massive amounts of anti-psychotics then I would have promptly knocked his phd loving ass out. Today if a doctor threatened to take away his massive cocktail of drugs without clinical lockdown involved, its possibly a death sentence for 1 or 2 of us, or kidnapping and confinement charges for myself when I have to tie him up.

Also, MEDICARE. Every motherfarking person in America should have Medicare. Take half my paycheck, I dont care, put everybody on Medicare. Every person in this country that would stop the government from providing medicare to those who can not get work provided health insurance is a farking traitor who deserves to be farking hanged. God damn you and I hope you get run over by a truck, and then have it covered by Medicare. You farktards.



/cant even afford chinese meds for myself but thank FSM my kids are covered.

Great Janitor: Will D.S.M. 5 pick up the open ended plot lines that D.S.M. 4 failed to resolve?

Sadly it just another sequel. Mostly derivative and lacking the depth of the original trilogy.

A Terrible Human: For some reason that article gives off Scientology like vibes.

A healthy skepticism of pharmaceutical cures that require long term dependence should not considered the sole providence of wingnuts or those harboring aliens in their bloodstream. There's probably an antipsychotic for that.

Gunny Walker: [i38.photobucket.com image 320x180]
Does it include sexual addiction?

Came for this, leaving satisfied.

/Mostly because I've been watching that show all damn day
//Like some sort of...addict

DerAppie: I'm still waiting for someone to classify introversion as a disorder. i mean, how could anyone enjoy him/herself in low stimulus environments? And what about that ability to concentrate for longer periods? That's just freaky. There should be a pill to ensure that they are happy, extroverted people.

The term "asocial" is still officially connected to Antisocial Personality IIRC, but in many circles it technically means anything from a mild introvert to someone who completely checks out of society and moves into the wilderness. That actually occasionally leads to lay people (especially HR, executives, and moms) attempting to diagnose anyone who's the slightest bit introverted with antisocial disorder and assming they're going to go postal on everyone at the first chance.

cookiefleck: How are you people getting your meds? I mean, I can go and have gone to my doctors office and he won't even give me a gotdamn tylenol for a headache.. he'll tell me to knock it off. But you people are getting the good sh*t easy?

Thus the term, "doctor shopping."

AliceBToklasLives: Glenford: I used to work in an adolescent psychiatric unit. You know what Oppositional Defiance Disorder is? Adolescence. It has to be the biggest bullshiat diagnosis.

I was once told that pretty much everyone in prison has Antisocial Personality Disorder. This was said with a straight face by a mental health professional.

Well, yes. One of the biggest criticisms of APD as a diagnostic category was that it was pretty much just a description of criminality. That's one of the reasons that it's eliminated in DSM V as part of the complete overhaul they did of the diagnostic framework of personality disorders.

The DSM V framework boils down a whole bunch of personality disorders in DSM IV to---I think DSM V has 4 PDs.

A lot of the stuff from APD, and from outside the DSM IV that was being discussed as sociopathy, and from NPD, has been grouped under the personality disorder "Psychopathy."

DSM V's approach to the personality disorders is to take a long list of attributes that you have to meet along certain axes to qualify for the disorder, and then focus on the degree to which those symptoms or attributes or deficits impair your functioning or otherwise affect you in major life areas.

This is where I disagree with the doctor who wrote TFA. DSM V, when it's used as designed, will reduce defining normal people with normal behavior as mentally ill, because DSM V gets back to one of the primary, root focuses of how we define mental illness.

Now, as a psychiatrist, he may have a problem with this approach, I don't know. As a psychiatrist, he's an MD, which means he looks at mental illness through the medical model, and not so much through the combined lens of medical issues combined with learned behaviors, cognitive components, and adaptive skills deficits.

Note that he's--as a doctor---equating treatment to pills and forgetting that there are non-pill treatments (like CBT for depression) that have a great research-substantiated track record for various disorders. Having some features of a diagnosis but not having the diagnosis can also be a guidepost for a therapist in helping a patient who just has a few problems in living to iron out, who can then go on his or her merry way and be done with things. Doesn't need a diagnosis, just needs a bit of good advice---and the manual gives the therapist a bit of a nudge in the right direction towards unraveling the patient's problem.

Take a kid who is having some attention problems but doesn't quite meet the diagnostic criteria for ADHD. Fixing the kid's attention problems in class may be as simple as sending him in with a thermos of iced tea and the teacher ignoring it when he drinks a mug of it in class to settle down. (Some schools are still sane.)

Ta-da. One kid who's doing well in school without a label, just an informal solution that works for that particular kid. Just a smidge of caffeine here and there and the kid's brain runs nice and smooth.

The only time we need to medicalize and label everything is when we've got too much of a stick up our collective butts to deal with people's eccentricities and quirks individually and informally and instead we try to treat everybody exactly the same unless they have a note from their doctor in triplicate.

That's why we've really got a million people diagnosed with a million things---because we quit having the common sense to treat people as individuals and we make everybody document everything with a doctor's note in triplicate and a pile of research studies over why they need to be cut some slack this particular way.

So people get the diagnosis, and they get the doctor's note in triplicate, and they get the pile of research studies to document why their kid needs the thermos of iced tea as an accommodation in class---only the kid ends up on a pill instead, because it's easier to get the school to not make waves over a pill than it is over a thermos of tea or a can of coke or a cup of coffee that would work just as well.

All these kids are diagnosed not because we're trying to medicalize normal people, but because we're trying to regiment people into little automatons, all exactly alike, all treated exactly like little robots, so that every little difference or bit of individuality is only tolerated with a doctor's excuse.

When we break the authoritarians' canes in half and send them home with a nice pension to raise petunias, and we go back to telling our neighbors and strangers, "Sure, why not? It's a free country."

When our communities elect school board members who campaign on a platform, "The phrase 'zero tolerance' sends the wrong message, a message of hatred and pain, to our youth. Tolerance is a virtue. We can teach and expect good behavior without bad-mouthing tolerance."

I'm serious. There needs to be a backlash movement to wipe that phrase off the face of American education.

And when we can deal with the variety and variability of free human beings, then people will quit having to have their tiniest deviance from some imaginary ideal medically diagnosed as a "defect."

foxyshadis: DerAppie: I'm still waiting for someone to classify introversion as a disorder. i mean, how could anyone enjoy him/herself in low stimulus environments? And what about that ability to concentrate for longer periods? That's just freaky. There should be a pill to ensure that they are happy, extroverted people.

The term "asocial" is still officially connected to Antisocial Personality IIRC, but in many circles it technically means anything from a mild introvert to someone who completely checks out of society and moves into the wilderness. That actually occasionally leads to lay people (especially HR, executives, and moms) attempting to diagnose anyone who's the slightest bit introverted with antisocial disorder and assming they're going to go postal on everyone at the first chance.

That actually avoidance personality disorder. It just means you don't like being around other people and are happier alone. Therapists are not to treat it like a problem unless the patient is unhappy about it. If they're happy and not hurting anyone or themselves just about every thearpist is willing to let things be.
/Also the therapy is the same with what you do with your shy friends. IE force them into social events and engagements.

I got a little creeped out reading this excerpt from the link under the article about 9 year old psychopaths:

By the time he turned 5, Michael had developed an uncanny ability to switch from full-blown anger to moments of pure rationality or calculated charm - a facility that Anne describes as deeply unsettling. "You never know when you're going to see a proper emotion," she said. She recalled one argument, over a homework assignment, when Michael shrieked and wept as she tried to reason with him. "I said: 'Michael, remember the brainstorming we did yesterday? All you have to do is take your thoughts from that and turn them into sentences, and you're done!' He's still screaming bloody murder, so I say, 'Michael, I thought we brainstormed so we could avoid all this drama today.' He stopped dead, in the middle of the screaming, turned to me and said in this flat, adult voice, 'Well, you didn't think that through very clearly then, did you?' "

Gugh. If my kid had done that I probably would have moved out right then.

MindStalker: dahmers love zombie: namegoeshere: As an Uninsured American, I am of course immune to all of these new psychiatric diagnoses.

It still scares the farking shiat out of me. For example: The report also found almost 4,000 foster and non-foster care infants - under a year old - on Medicaid in five states were taking psychotropic drugs. Researchers said the risks these drugs pose to children are "not well understood". Infants. Less than one year old. On psychotropic medication. Infants. Less than one year old.

I cannot conceive of a single legitimate medical reason for this.

Crack babies and heavily abused infants could theoretically have a need for such medication to get over their shock trauma.

This.

Which is exactly the types of babies you find in unusually high statistical numbers in that group (fosters).

Still, it's something that should be tracked very closely...

I won't give a shiat until all these new "illnesses" breed the next generation of human vermin claiming to be disabled so they can live off my dime.

foxyshadis: DerAppie: I'm still waiting for someone to classify introversion as a disorder. i mean, how could anyone enjoy him/herself in low stimulus environments? And what about that ability to concentrate for longer periods? That's just freaky. There should be a pill to ensure that they are happy, extroverted people.

The term "asocial" is still officially connected to Antisocial Personality IIRC, but in many circles it technically means anything from a mild introvert to someone who completely checks out of society and moves into the wilderness. That actually occasionally leads to lay people (especially HR, executives, and moms) attempting to diagnose anyone who's the slightest bit introverted with antisocial disorder and assming they're going to go postal on everyone at the first chance.

Actuality, sociopaths cannot stand being alone, and are often extremely extroverted. The idea of them being the creepy loner is a falsehood created by hollywood. In reality, sociopaths are excellent impression managers, and are more likely to be the last person you suspect. Probably very popular, and well liked. The term antisocial as it applies to them just means they are destructive socially, not that they don't take part in society. They need people around them to manipulate and psychologically torture because it makes them feel powerful.

In a way, someone being a loner is a good way to tell if they aren't a sociopath, but it doesn't mean they're necessarily sane or harmless, either.

AliceBToklasLives: Glenford: I used to work in an adolescent psychiatric unit. You know what Oppositional Defiance Disorder is? Adolescence. It has to be the biggest bullshiat diagnosis.

I was once told that pretty much everyone in prison has Antisocial Personality Disorder. This was said with a straight face by a mental health professional.

Quick google: "Antisocial personality disorder is a mental health condition in which a person has a long-term pattern of manipulating, exploiting, or violating the rights of others. This behavior is often criminal."

Wiki: "The World Health Organization's International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, tenth edition (ICD-10), defines a conceptually similar disorder to antisocial personality disorder called (F60.2 ) Dissocial personality disorder.[5]
It is characterized by at least 3 of the following:
Callous unconcern for the feelings of others.
Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules, and obligations.
Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, though having no difficulty in establishing them.
Very low tolerance to frustration and a low threshold for discharge of aggression, including violence.
Incapacity to experience guilt or to profit from experience, particularly punishment.
Markedly prone to blame others or to offer plausible rationalizations for the behavior that has brought the person into conflict with society.
There may be persistent irritability as an associated feature.
The diagnosis includes what may be referred to as amoral, antisocial, asocial, psychopathic, and sociopathic personality (disorder).
The criteria specifically rule out conduct disorders.[6] Dissocial personality disorder criteria differ from those for antisocial and sociopathic personality disorders.[7]
It is a requirement of ICD-10 that a diagnosis of any specific personality disorder also satisfies a set of general personality disorder criteria.
[edit]DSM-IV
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (DSM IV-TR), defines antisocial personality disorder (in Axis II Cluster B) as:[1]
A) There is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others occurring since age 15 years, as indicated by three or more of the following:
failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;
deception, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;
impulsiveness or failure to plan ahead;
irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;
reckless disregard for safety of self or others;
consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations;
lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another;
B) The individual is at least age 18 years.
C) There is evidence of conduct disorder with onset before age 15 years.
D) The occurrence of antisocial behavior is not exclusively during the course of schizophrenia or a manic episode.
New evidence points to the possibility that children often develop antisocial personality disorder as a result of environmental as well as genetic influence. The individual must be at least 18 years of age to be diagnosed with this disorder (Criterion B), but those commonly diagnosed with ASPD as adults were diagnosed with conduct disorder as children. The prevalence of this disorder is 3% in males and 1% from females, as stated in the DSM IV-TR."

People who engage in this behavior on a regular basis end up in prison?

PepperFreak: I won't give a shiat until all these new "illnesses" breed the next generation of human vermin claiming to be disabled so they can live off my dime.

shiat, you should take a look at yourself if you want to see some "human vermin".

JasonOfOrillia: Cyrusv10: JasonOfOrillia: How do you shrink lead?

/And is it a real plum bum?

I normally wiz past many of the comments on Fark, but yours was particularly bizarre and irrelevant. Can you please, umm, explain?

I read the headline as Lead, as in the metal, shrink, as in the action, instead of as leading psychologist. The chemical symbol for lead is Pb from the Latin word Plumbum.

I did the same the first time, and my first thought was the same as yours: how do you shrink lead?

At least they're getting rid of that Asperger's BSery. There's nothing special about you idiots. You're just socially awkward times 3.

cookiefleck: How are you people getting your meds? I mean, I can go and have gone to my doctors office and he won't even give me a gotdamn tylenol for a headache.. he'll tell me to knock it off. But you people are getting the good sh*t easy?

No, dude. To get the "good shiat" all I have to do is stop taking all my drugs. See, having a permanent residence in crazy land is very different from going slumming there.

But when you live there, you know that: a) the "good shiat" always has to be paid for with a bad crash when you run out of steam; b) however good the "high" was, it is rarely worth the crash; c) the cycle repeats and over the long term it is bad, bad, bad news; d) every single time you visit crazy land--whether you're slumming or going home for the holidays--it doesn't have to let you back out--ever.

People who go slumming crazy land think it's fun.

Permanent residents look at you guys and think you're goddamned farking fools to mess up a reasonably sane brain on purpose, you don't know how goddamned lucky you are, and you have no farking idea how hard the rest of us have to work to get a weekend pass out of this joint.

So no, we don't get the "good stuff" easy. We're working hard as hell, and the pdocs helping us, for a short-term pass out of crazy-land, and we're all hoping that if we can get out, we can overstay our visas and stay that way.

Occam's Disposable Razor: Julie Cochrane: Note that he's--as a doctor---equating treatment to pills and forgetting that there are non-pill treatments

Kind of a stretch. I know we were trained about everything from exercise to CBT to St. John's wort to just making time to talk the the patient all the way up to electroshock therapy (ECT - which is still used occasionally to this day and can be very effective for severe, refractory depression).
And that was just as a med student, psych residents learn quite a but more.

This idea that all doctors are just machines you feed symptoms into which then attempt to spit out the appropriate pill to dull the symptoms is downright silly. I'm not sure where it came from, but your physician should be doing a much better job than that.

What the hell planet are you from where that's NOT the case. Are you still a resident? Give it 10 years, we'll see if you still want to "make time to talk with patients".

The many many medical doctors I've encountered have been, for the most part, surprisingly unintelligent individuals with sever god complexes. The good ones were too jaded to give a shiat. Why bother caring when you make you're money whether or not you're a good doctor. The art listening is the most important ability for a doctor to possess, and it is completely lost.

Ahh yes, Dr. Frances (the author of the op-ed), the Grand Old Dinosaur of psychiatry. This is the same guy who adamantly believes that homosexuality is a treatable "disease." Sorry but I take that man's opinions with a huge grain of salt. His is a dying breed and he knows it. That's not to say that the DSM-4 isn't chock full of BS diagnoses, but Frances is hardly the go-to guy for rational opinions on the matter.

cookiefleck: Lol I really don't want to take any meds... it would make it harder to manipulate people

Occam's Disposable Razor: Julie Cochrane: Note that he's--as a doctor---equating treatment to pills and forgetting that there are non-pill treatments

Kind of a stretch. I know we were trained about everything from exercise to CBT to St. John's wort to just making time to talk the the patient all the way up to electroshock therapy (ECT - which is still used occasionally to this day and can be very effective for severe, refractory depression).
And that was just as a med student, psych residents learn quite a but more.

This idea that all doctors are just machines you feed symptoms into which then attempt to spit out the appropriate pill to dull the symptoms is downright silly. I'm not sure where it came from, but your physician should be doing a much better job than that.

I know not all doctors are like that. I'm saying the doctor writing in TFA seemed to be doing that.

He didn't seem to be seeing a middle ground between sick and normal. There are a whole lot of people who go to therapists who have problems in living who simply need some help. It does help to have a code to put on the chart for the visit.

I'll use myself as an example, and pretend for a moment there was nothing else wrong with me. I have some of the features of BPD, but I don't meet the diagnostic criteria. I have had some of the history associated with people who come down with it, and some of the problems in living you get along with that. All at a subclinical level. But I was having a bunch of other problems that brought me in for treatment.

Anyway. Say I had come in because of frustration with the problems in living associated with the BPD symptoms/features. The way DSM V looks at the personality disorders, it makes it easier to sort that out, as well as sorting out that the problems are sub-clinical.

However, by identifying the areas the problems are in, and that one model of what goes on with BPDs are "skills deficits"---things they didn't learn in early childhood that they can learn as part of the DBT process---that gives the therapist some idea of therapeutic possibilities that may help.

That is, the therapist can look for the specific areas where there might be a skills deficit, look for specific behaviors to increase or decrease, look for specific skills that might help bridge that gap.

So that's an example where you might have a client who doesn't have that mental illness, but identifying the subclinical problem points towards a non-drug permanent treatment for that problem in living.

I suppose another way to put this is: Anybody can get an infected hangnail.

Blast. I had an image to go along with that, but it was thrown away, and i didn't do a preview.

Kumana Wanalaia: As an Aberrant American, I say bring on the meds.

You don't want yours? Fine, more for me. NOM NOM NOM

Julie Cochrane: Now, as a psychiatrist, he may have a problem with this approach, I don't know. As a psychiatrist, he's an MD, which means he looks at mental illness through the medical model, and not so much through the combined lens of medical issues combined with learned behaviors, cognitive components, and adaptive skills deficits.

Note that he's--as a doctor---equating treatment to pills and forgetting that there are non-pill treatments (like CBT for depression) that have a great research-substantiated track record for var ...
==========================================================

You pretty much hit the nail on the head right there. Psychiatrists are absolutely not the same as Psychologists. The former seem to be stuck in the idea that you can medicate everything away, but the latter actually use a broader (and often less invasive) approach to treat the whole person.

dahmers love zombie: On psychotropic medication. Infants. Less than one year old.

I cannot conceive of a single legitimate medical reason for this.


Epilepsy.

Kali-Yuga: PonceAlyosha: No, because for the vast majority of people it's not a delusion, just a socially enforced untrue idea.

de·lu·sion

3: Psychiatry a fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact

Even the current DSM has a disclaimer after the diagnostic criteria of Delusional Disorder stating that religious belief is exempt even though it meets all the standards.

Like all mental illnesses, there is a spectrum representing a range of severity, comprising relatively "severe" mental disorders through to relatively "mild and nonclinical deficits".

You have your "high functioning" people which comprise the vast majority of believers, and you have the fundamentalists on the other end of the spectrum.

I would argue the majority is actually people that simply never put effort into learning. I hear the world is round, who am I to judge, so many people say it is, so eh, whatever. When I draw earth, I'll make it round. I'll pray to god, because I'm supposed to, I'll be nice because I'm supposed to.

Then there are a rather large, but not majority, group of people who would be resistant to a semi serious extent, but as you say are high functioning, these people can own up to reality but it takes a little more effort than the last group. Willfully ignorant maybe. Like ICP, they don't know how magnets work and don't want scientists to tell them the answers. They're addicted to the childlike euporia and wonderment that comes at contemplating the concept of god and heaven(or whatever religion / magic). Magic all up in this biatch. They're capable of doing science and don't feel threatened by it in general, just don't go on about it to tell them that their addiction isn't god, because, man, that totally ruins their high. Go be a buzzkill elsewhere. They don't want to listen, but if the euphoria can be found elsewhere, they may start to think about it, and move up a notch with proper motivation.(I was a religion hopper for this reason, I was told there was something, so when that something became...nothing special, I moved on...and then when I noticed a trend....and when I stopped to think about it, you can see why people would make all these different structures...power and control...not that it's alll that sinister, but it makes sense...ordinary credulity,)
This stage is escapable from a combination of age/wisdom/motivation in a number of combinations.

Then you've got a sizable portion that are unshakable. This area has 2 subgroups.
1. Serious Euphoria junkies. They'll kill people to score if they have to, incapable of wanting to give it up.
2. Your genuinely delusional people.

/or something like that
//lots of shades in the spectrum

Occam's Disposable Razor: GBmanNC: The many many medical doctors I've encountered have been, for the most part, surprisingly unintelligent individuals with sever god complexes.

You're going into your office visit with this attitude and expecting people not to notice or react to it?

I don't call a plumber and then look down my nose at him while he's at my home. I don't bring my car to a mechanic and think, "This guy thinks he's such a badass because he might know a little more about cars than me." I know these people know more about their work than I do, and I trust them to fix the problem I have presented them with. We're all just people trying to do our jobs...

Anyway, sorry a doc pissed in your cereal. We aren't all like that. And the bad ones most certainly do lose money in lawsuits or lost patients.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am still a resident. All that means is my schedule is busier than the attendings'. I still listen to patients, as do my co-workers. It's our job.

Occam's Disposable Razor: GBmanNC: The many many medical doctors I've encountered have been, for the most part, surprisingly unintelligent individuals with sever god complexes.

You're going into your office visit with this attitude and expecting people not to notice or react to it?

I don't call a plumber and then look down my nose at him while he's at my home. I don't bring my car to a mechanic and think, "This guy thinks he's such a badass because he might know a little more about cars than me." I know these people know more about their work than I do, and I trust them to fix the problem I have presented them with. We're all just people trying to do our jobs...

Anyway, sorry a doc pissed in your cereal. We aren't all like that. And the bad ones most certainly do lose money in lawsuits or lost patients.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am still a resident. All that means is my schedule is busier than the attendings'. I still listen to patients, as do my co-workers. It's our job.

A surprising lack of logic used my most doctors as well... Do you think I started with that attitude, or perhaps came to the conclusion over a period of years after personal experience? You're dismissing my personal experience, that's the start of the road to "hearing" your patients but not really "listening".

I'm sorry if I got all biatchy, you personally never did anything to me and I truly hope you go on to have a meaningful career. You're just a convenient punching bag for a frustrating problem.

PonceAlyosha: Religion was just what that guy brought up. To say "delusion" where anything is unverifiable/untrue is just stupidity.

I lost my train of thought in my last reply saw this and regained it.

Your deeply religious(my last category), will tend to defy real science. Evolution to health care. They flat out reject it, no matter their educational background, they'd rather cure their baby by letting it get bitten by a sacred amount of cobra's than take it to an evil hospitable. Certain creationists are this bad, and even some less literal religious sects, but just as vehement in not only distrust, but active disbelief in science.

GBmanNC: Do you think I started with that attitude, or perhaps came to the conclusion over a period of years after personal experience?

Is a white guy still a racist if he got mugged by a couple dozen black people and learned to hate all blacks?

Hint.
YES

It's entirely possible to have a long string of bad experiences that are not representative of the whole of that given experience.

That's why judging on personal anecdote only is always a bad idea.

Just wanted to say I love the phrase "diagnostic exuberance."

/College years go back to DSM-2
/Kudos to the author
/Glad someone in high places is saying this

omeganuepsilon: GBmanNC: Do you think I started with that attitude, or perhaps came to the conclusion over a period of years after personal experience?

Is a white guy still a racist if he got mugged by a couple dozen black people and learned to hate all blacks?

Hint.
YES

It's entirely possible to have a long string of bad experiences that are not representative of the whole of that given experience.

That's why judging on personal anecdote only is always a bad idea.

Well, tell the lab rat that there are plenty of rats in the wild that *don't* get an electric shock when they eat the cheese.

I'm sure that will convince it to keep trying to eat the cheese.

Interesting... the article never mentioned the hullabulu the DSM III-TR caused. I'd say the pendulum has swung the other way after all this time.

AliceBToklasLives: thatboyoverthere: AliceBToklasLives: Glenford: I used to work in an adolescent psychiatric unit. You know what Oppositional Defiance Disorder is? Adolescence. It has to be the biggest bullshiat diagnosis.

I was once told that pretty much everyone in prison has Antisocial Personality Disorder. This was said with a straight face by a mental health professional.

Antisocial Personalty Disorder is what Sociopaths and Psychopaths are. It's characterized by the fact that either you don't care if you hurt someone or actually go out of your way to do so. IE pretty much a lot of guys in prison. The guy might have been using hyperbole but he is right.

Sure - But (A) of course criminals are anti-social - that's why they are in prison; it's sort of like saying everyone who goes to Applebees has "Poor Taste Disorder"; (B) such a diagnosis is fine if it's used to treat people who are truly ill, but I worry that such a diagnosis may be used to mitigate the criminal's responsibility.

/sure "society" is part of the problem (there is a very strong poverty/crime correlation) - but so is the dude who blew away the 7-11 clerk to get $40

That's more of a problem with the criminal justice system, not the DSM. If we started holding individuals responsible for their actions instead of using mental illness as get-out-of-jail-free card than it wouldn't be a problem.

meddleRPI: Well, tell the lab rat that there are plenty of rats in the wild that *don't* get an electric shock when they eat the cheese.

I'm sure that will convince it to keep trying to eat the cheese.

Animals are allowed to be prejudice, it is a defense mechanism. Lab rats have no concept of logic, such as we do at any rate, it is beyond their very limited understanding(and yours apparently).

We humans are apparently trying to weed it out in the name of logic, if not "morals and ethics". Intellectual honesty requires the distinction.

dahmers love zombie: namegoeshere: As an Uninsured American, I am of course immune to all of these new psychiatric diagnoses.

It still scares the farking shiat out of me. For example: The report also found almost 4,000 foster and non-foster care infants - under a year old - on Medicaid in five states were taking psychotropic drugs. Researchers said the risks these drugs pose to children are "not well understood". Infants. Less than one year old. On psychotropic medication. Infants. Less than one year old.

I cannot conceive of a single legitimate medical reason for this.

Only thing I can think of is the drugs are being used to treat something else like how I take a medication for eliplicy to treat migranes

But weed is still bad right?

I just spent a few months helping someone study for the national and state psych licensing exams. We'd do flash cards, and when we'd go through assessments "What is the Luria-Nebraska? What is the WMS?" etc., I'd toss in "What is the Voight-Kampff?" and watch her struggle. It never got old.

/I didn't help her. Why didn't I help her?
//Would a replicant thinking it's human be experiencing a personalization episode?

I wrote a long treatise, but it was too sad for Fark. Psychiatry: ugg.

It's very simple/

Pharmaceutical companies make vast mountains of psychiatric medications. Insurance companies will not pay billions of dollars for said psychiatric medications without the diagnostic code that goes in the little box on the form. The APA makes up diagnoses and gives them codes so that the members of the APA can put the diagnostic codes in the little boxes on the forms and get paid money by the insurance companies. Then Roger keeps looking at me. In addition, the government also requires the diagnostic codes that go in the little boxes on the forms. Otherwise it will not pay the pharmaceutical companies for the psychiatric medications. This is obviously a never-ending psychopharmaceutical circle jerk of epic proportions, and it turns out that Tom Cruise wasn't wrong about everything, which we'll talk about next time because our fifty minutes are up.

I don't like the idea of infants being so medicated, but to be fair, if you look at what kinds of infants are in the foster care system, they're not statistically the same group of infants that you'd find outside of the foster system. These are babies born to drug addicted and alcoholic mothers, mothers who smoked, who did not have prenatal care. They have all kinds of birth defects and brain defects at a much higher rate than normal, they may be born addicted to whatever drugs their mothers were on and have severe physiological because of that, which require medication to keep them from having seizures. Also, young, single mothers are more likely to give up unhealthy children, children born with genetic conditions or other birth defects they feel they can't cope with, financially or otherwise.

Babies in the foster system are not healthy babies. People are always wanting to adopt healthy babies, if they aren't being snatched up right away it's usually because they aren't healthy, and it's something difficult, expensive or unpleasant to deal with.

omeganuepsilon: meddleRPI: Well, tell the lab rat that there are plenty of rats in the wild that *don't* get an electric shock when they eat the cheese.

I'm sure that will convince it to keep trying to eat the cheese.

Animals are allowed to be prejudice, it is a defense mechanism. Lab rats have no concept of logic, such as we do at any rate, it is beyond their very limited understanding(and yours apparently).

We humans are apparently trying to weed it out in the name of logic, if not "morals and ethics". Intellectual honesty requires the distinction.

You're right. Humanity has no need for defense mechanisms!

Regardless, the mean means nothing when you find yourself in the tail distribution. I'm not defending prejudice, but let's not completely discount the value of personal experience. We lead personal, not statistical lives. Where prejudicial arguments get lost is the fact that people are capable of better resolution than we give them credit for.

If I get robbed three times by a person, of whatever race, that acts, dresses, and behaves a certain way, I'm going to avoid that kind of person. I don't care what the data say. If I come across a person of the same race, but they act/dress/behave differently, then I'm not going to treat them like a robber.

Also some people are apparently just fine with being sociopaths, do your research.

Psychology is pseudoscience, pure and simple. It needs to be discredited and shoved in the dustbin of history.


Neuroscience... that has some potential.

clyph: Neuroscience

You make valid point. Do we treat a broken arm differently if it was broken while playing soccer vs. falling down the stairs? No. So as neuroscience evolves we will treat brain issues as they are, not just based on what caused them. Imbalances in the brain chemistry are what they are, no matter the cause. The sooner we start treating what matters and not what doesn't the better.

\Also the sooner we stop stigmatizing brain "injuries" and treat depression and other disorders like broken arms, the better.

AliceBToklasLives: I was once told that pretty much everyone in prison has Antisocial Personality Disorder. This was said with a straight face by a mental health professional.

Human Personality Disorder

A pervasive pattern of being a human, walking around, thinking about stuff, eating, wearing clothes except in the shower usually, sometimes having coffee in the mornings at that nice cafe up the street if not too late for work, that sort of thing, as indicated by one or more of the following:

(1) has a persistent habit of being alive

(2) is preoccupied with breathing, seeing and hearing things that are there

(3) believes that he or she is often awake and sometimes likes ice cream

4) requires oxygen or water

(5) has a sense of feeling sleepy at least once a day, often followed by long periods of sleep

(6) is interpersonally interactive, i.e., sometimes talks to other people, but not always

(7) lacks fire: is almost never consumed entirely by flames

(8) is often walking around, or maybe lying down on the couch

(9) shows behaviors

From The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Sixth Edition, 2026

Psychiatry *shouldn't* be about perfection.

It should be about confusion.

You want to give the patient drugs.

The drugs most likely won't work.

*however*
their condition can be treated *without* drugs

so give them the drugs. with side effects worse than the condition itself.
then the person will be encouraged to change so they don't have to take meds

worked for me.

clyph: Psychology is pseudoscience, pure and simple. It needs to be discredited and shoved in the dustbin of history.


Neuroscience... that has some potential.

And biological studies used to be called blasphemy and had to be carried out in secret.

It's a science, but it's in it's infancy. It's not fake(pseudo), it's limited.

What holds it back is humanity's decency. People like Pavlov are no longer allowed to do their tests.
Not saying it's wrong to stop him from farking up people, far from it, but it's a shame in a sense that knowledge is attainable, we just will not do it.

taurusowner: Do we treat a broken arm differently if it was broken while playing soccer vs. falling down the stairs? No.

But if there's a stab wound or a gunshot to the arm we do.

The brain and the psyche are the same way. May appear similar at a cursory glance, but there are minute differences in some cases, and different solutions may be required.

All in all it's a good analogy, but a flawed conclusion is drawn from it.

Different injuries, though similar, may require open surgery to remove fragments, or to implant a titanium plate, or repair torn flesh, or a simple set and cast. And that can be two different broken arms from a similar event.

Thing is, neuroscience is akin to complicated surgery, and psychology is akin to a simple setting of the bone in a clean break with almost no collateral damage. The sciences all intertwine in such ways, chemistry, biology, physics, psychology, psychology can all be useful sciences in treating and figuring out humans, and indeed, other creatures that qualify as sentient.

Just because it's not a complete sciences does not mean that we shouldn't use it. Even what you think of as "real" sciences are not "complete".

Jon iz teh kewl: Psychiatry *shouldn't* be about perfection.

It should be about confusion.

You want to give the patient drugs.

The drugs most likely won't work.

*however*
their condition can be treated *without* drugs

so give them the drugs. with side effects worse than the condition itself.
then the person will be encouraged to change so they don't have to take meds

worked for me.

Sometimes it's not really a disorder. I experienced every single diagnosable symptom of depression for about two and a half years, including suicidal thoughts. And then came home from Afghanistan and actually started dating and banging random chicks (call me a douche, whatever, I had never done it before) and all of a sudden my depression when away. Feelings of accomplishment and actually being liked by others did more to make me feel better about myself than any medication could have

People who feel like their lives suck and have no meaning aren't always depressed. Sometimes their lives really do suck and have no meaning. Fix that, you fix the "depression".

taurusowner: Jon iz teh kewl: Psychiatry *shouldn't* be about perfection.

It should be about confusion.

You want to give the patient drugs.

The drugs most likely won't work.

*however*
their condition can be treated *without* drugs

so give them the drugs. with side effects worse than the condition itself.
then the person will be encouraged to change so they don't have to take meds

worked for me.

Sometimes it's not really a disorder. I experienced every single diagnosable symptom of depression for about two and a half years, including suicidal thoughts. And then came home from Afghanistan and actually started dating and banging random chicks (call me a douche, whatever, I had never done it before) and all of a sudden my depression when away. Feelings of accomplishment and actually being liked by others did more to make me feel better about myself than any medication could have

People who feel like their lives suck and have no meaning aren't always depressed. Sometimes their lives really do suck and have no meaning. Fix that, you fix the "depression".

"banging random chicks"??

well i'd do that but i'd be called a rapist if i ever tried that.

HotIgneous Intruder: Maladaptive behavior. If you wonder if you're crazy you're sane and therefore not crazy.

But you may have an anxiety disorder.

BigLuca: PsiChick: Yeeeah, I think it was pretty obvious when 4 came out that the political infighting is really shooting the entire field in the foot.

BigLuca: Some changes ... "It is proposed that the eight symptoms of Oppositional Defiant Disorder should be divided into the following categories: Angry/Irritable Mood; Defiant/Headstrong Behavior; and Vindictiveness."

And do you know why they are changing that? Because fark you, that's why.

Same with Asperger's. The disorder has major and important differences from autism (especially that people with AS crave human contact\communication while autists may or may not), but why are they changing it? Because fark you, that's why.

This is not how you help people.

Yeah I heard about that and don't really understand it. They are just lumping it into Autism Spectrum Disorder. I don't know the back story, but it seems like it is more of a coding and billing deal. I sense politics afoot.

If you don't know, it's just bad reporting. The info was very easy to find here. Nothing to do with politics - it's a basic question of whether Aspergers really exists as a separate disorder, or if it's just high-functioning autism.

Currently, there's really only two differences between the Autism and Aspergers diagnostic criteria:
- Aspergers kids don't have language problems
- for a diagnosis of Autism, there must be symptoms before age 3.

That's pretty much it. Apart from the bits about onset and impairments in communication, the criteria are word-for-word identical.

The only empirical difference between people diagnosed as having Autism or Aspergers seems to be that those with Aspergers do better on verbal-IQ type tests (which is what you'd expect since by definition they are the group who don't have language problems). Having one vs the other doesn't tell the clinician anything about the cause, the appropriate treatment or probable outcome. Since it's not telling us anything useful, the diagnosis has no external validity - it honestly makes no sense to have two separate categories.

Part of the problem may be clinicians labelling all "high-functioning" cases as Aspergers because it's the new least-offensive label. But either way, the current label isn't telling us anything. So it makes more sense to put Aspergers back under autism, but make allowance for appropriate notes like "high-functioning" or "good language skills" or maybe even rank the severity of the impact on daily functioning.

IWood: Human Personality Disorder

While you have a point, people actually use that as an arguing point.

Philosophy and society in general want to create a "norm" for their own comfort. They strive to project what is and is not "right" into all sciences. Religions try to do this with creationists, but they're largely laughed out of the circle. It's not so easy to do that to "moral" and "ethical" beings though. They share many of the same attitudes and even opinions of the deeply religious, but do not have a ridiculous sky god to ridicule, and are reasonable in other areas, so it's harder to demonstrate their unwillingness to learn.

Just as an example that I remember reading about.

Some say it's a "disorder" to want to breed with a female as soon as she's able because of society's norms and code of behavior.

Evolutionary speaking though, it's a wise move. It increases the odds that the progeny will be yours. Same reason the honey-moon came about, to allow for sufficient time to ensure that no other male's seed was what caused the pregnancy. That drive in man is a fundamental urge to reproduce.

Sure, I'll agree the guy is a sociopath for not conforming to society even though society tells him it's wrong, but who's society to be making that call? It's a purely moral judgement.(which is why I don't buy into some uses of sociopath as a disorder, genetics and instinctual drives are not a democracy, can't even be controlled by the guy that owns them)

The drive itself is immoral, but not unnatural. Creatures throughout the animal kingdom do it, humans used to, and likely do still in some cultures where it's allowed.

Jon iz teh kewl: taurusowner: Jon iz teh kewl: Psychiatry *shouldn't* be about perfection.

It should be about confusion.

You want to give the patient drugs.

The drugs most likely won't work.

*however*
their condition can be treated *without* drugs

so give them the drugs. with side effects worse than the condition itself.
then the person will be encouraged to change so they don't have to take meds

worked for me.

Sometimes it's not really a disorder. I experienced every single diagnosable symptom of depression for about two and a half years, including suicidal thoughts. And then came home from Afghanistan and actually started dating and banging random chicks (call me a douche, whatever, I had never done it before) and all of a sudden my depression when away. Feelings of accomplishment and actually being liked by others did more to make me feel better about myself than any medication could have

People who feel like their lives suck and have no meaning aren't always depressed. Sometimes their lives really do suck and have no meaning. Fix that, you fix the "depression".

"banging random chicks"??

well i'd do that but i'd be called a rapist if i ever tried that.

Talk to female you're attracted to. See female 1-on-1 in social setting. End in coitus.

The same thing most guys do in high school and college but I had never done, and I'm 28. The lack of a social life and romantic validation played hell with my self-worth. I'm just now getting back on track, a good 10 years behind when most males do.

Old news is old

RE the babies on psychotropic drugs, this mythbuster report should make you feel better. By far the most common class was anti-anxiety tablets ... and GAO was classifying antihistamines as anti-anxiety drugs!

Sure, as a side-effect an antihistamine might make you feel a little relaxed and drowsy, but best guess is that they were trying to stop a runny nose, not dope the kid up!

Take away the 3,509 antihistamine scripts, you're left with 332 ... 271 of which were benzos (probably used to slow-detox baby after birth). Some of the rest are anti-convulsants.

All in all, very few questionable scripts.

taurusowner: Jon iz teh kewl: taurusowner: Jon iz teh kewl: Psychiatry *shouldn't* be about perfection.

It should be about confusion.

You want to give the patient drugs.

The drugs most likely won't work.

*however*
their condition can be treated *without* drugs

so give them the drugs. with side effects worse than the condition itself.
then the person will be encouraged to change so they don't have to take meds

worked for me.

Sometimes it's not really a disorder. I experienced every single diagnosable symptom of depression for about two and a half years, including suicidal thoughts. And then came home from Afghanistan and actually started dating and banging random chicks (call me a douche, whatever, I had never done it before) and all of a sudden my depression when away. Feelings of accomplishment and actually being liked by others did more to make me feel better about myself than any medication could have

People who feel like their lives suck and have no meaning aren't always depressed. Sometimes their lives really do suck and have no meaning. Fix that, you fix the "depression".

"banging random chicks"??

well i'd do that but i'd be called a rapist if i ever tried that.

Talk to female you're attracted to. See female 1-on-1 in social setting. End in coitus.

The same thing most guys do in high school and college but I had never done, and I'm 28. The lack of a social life and romantic validation played hell with my self-worth. I'm just now getting back on track, a good 10 years behind when most males do.

Pretty ghay.
I would have married the first one.
But that's just me.

NobleHam: Peer review and politics are the same thing, dummies.

My wife would hate to agree with you, but she would. Under her breath. With her back turned. She's been on the receiving end of someone trying to protect their previous findings that she found evidence against using more in-depth procedure.

omeganuepsilon: PonceAlyosha: Religion was just what that guy brought up. To say "delusion" where anything is unverifiable/untrue is just stupidity.

I lost my train of thought in my last reply saw this and regained it.

Your deeply religious(my last category), will tend to defy real science. Evolution to health care. They flat out reject it, no matter their educational background, they'd rather cure their baby by letting it get bitten by a sacred amount of cobra's than take it to an evil hospitable. Certain creationists are this bad, and even some less literal religious sects, but just as vehement in not only distrust, but active disbelief in science.

You know one of the big differences between humans and the great apes, cognitively? It's not just how intelligent we are. It's how creative we are.

The two things are not the same. They're two different talents/attributes. On the very low end of the scale they strongly correlate---meaning if you're very low intelligence, you're very low creativity, and vice versa.

As you go up the scale, the correlation diverges rapidly, so that by the time you hit genius level in intelligence or creativity, being a genius in one says absolutely nothing about your ability in the other, beyond that you beat a basic minimum.

But anyway, when you look at great apes, they're real good at copying each other, and every generation or so they'll have a "genius" who thinks of something new. Like the "genius" ape who thought of washing her potatoes in the sea to salt them. The other apes copied her, and now they all do it. A cultural advancement---but one of creativity, not necessarily smarts. It had to occur to her.

A lot of their advances that get carried on through the future of the whole troop, maybe spread to other troops locally, are like that. It had to occur to someone. An advance of creativity, not reasoning.

Psychology has studied creativity a lot. It's still not really well understood. But we know it frequently correlates highly with mental illness. And when it doesn't go along with mental illness, it often goes along with the families who have the genes for mental illness--just sometimes with individuals who aren't sick (like Ada Lovelace).

But all humans are pretty damned creative, compared to great apes.

To be creative, you have to be able to conceive of reality the way it isn't.

I suspect all humans being a little bit nuts may just be part of the price we pay for being able to create and build and develop neat things and think great thoughts and chart new courses for ourselves.

Being a little bit nuts may be the price we pay for being able to even conceive of the question: Where do you see yourself in five years?

There are a few categories they should put back in. Lulz would be had.

It's psuedo-science. At best.

Jixa: dahmers love zombie: I cannot conceive of a single legitimate medical reason for this.


I'm sure GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, AstraZeneca and the other pharmaceutical companies could conceive of several billion monetary reasons.

Because everyone is sick and even if you're not, there's a pill for that too.

Yeah. but....
For every BS serotonin drug they come up with, they come up with a legit drug that actually helps people. (citation needed). OK, not sure about the ratio, but they are coming up with new heart meds, diabetes meds, cancer drugs, and the pills that are selling are financing the actual research. So I'm torn.

omeganuepsilon: It's a science, but it's in it's infancy. It's not fake(pseudo), it's limited.

I disagree.

Psychology overwhelmingly lacks the methodological rigor of the physical sciences and science-based medicine. There are a few bright pockets of scientific rigor (which are mostly coming from under the neuroscience banner), but they are by far the exception rather than the rule.

As with chiropractic, it may have some practical value in some specific limited cases, but those cases are far more narrowly constrained than the vast majority of practitioners will admit. And, like chiropractic, the field is rife with quackery and charlatans who do more harm than good. Most damningly, the field at large has done very little to defrock the quacks in it's rank and distance itself from discredited practices.

Definition of Pseudoscience, per Wikipedia:
Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status.

Pseudoscience is often characterized by the use of vague, exaggerated or unprovable claims, an over-reliance on confirmation rather than rigorous attempts at refutation, a lack of openness to evaluation by other experts, and a general absence of systematic processes to rationally develop theories."

Let's see:
Presented as scientific? Check.
Does not adhere to valid scientific method? Check
Lacks supporting evidence or plausibility? Check
Untestable? Check
Unprovable claims? Check
Over-reliance on confirmation? Check
Lacks rigorous refutation? Check
Lack of openness to evaluation by outside experts? Check

Textbook pseudoscience.

Julie Cochrane: I suspect all humans being a little bit nuts may just be part of the price we pay for being able to create and build and develop neat things and think great thoughts and chart new courses for ourselves.

Certainly. But if we can find the mechanic that allows the mind to latch onto what is highly unlikely, or even impossible, in favor of more obvious simple explanations that do hold true and are demonstrable to be considered truth within scientific standards...

Do we manipulate?

Psychology tries to nudge us into the right direction, but what if we could forcibly place people on the intellectually honest path of thinking? Would we?

That gets to be dangerous ground in today's liberal and warm and cuddly world view.
/rhetorical

I do believe that if education revolved more around critical thinking instead of commuting pure facts to memory, that there would be less of a split society. More progress would be made socially and scientifically, and education would progress as well. It would be a positive cycle, at least until we slide into another limitation.

Religion and philosophical language and precepts allow for a lot of unsound logic, and even disbelief of what's taught in school, from a very early age. Sure, kids can answer the tests, but that does not prove understanding of a concept of an event.

They do not seek to circumvent the ability to rationalize/justify an illogical state, much less teach the proven method of discovering fact. Its glossed over if touched upon at all.

Makes for a lot of discrepancy of "opinions" on what is fact.

clyph: Presented as scientific? Check.
Does not adhere to valid scientific method? Check
Lacks supporting evidence or plausibility? Check
Untestable? Check
Unprovable claims? Check
Over-reliance on confirmation? Check
Lacks rigorous refutation? Check
Lack of openness to evaluation by outside experts? Check

Textbook pseudoscience.

Pavlov got very reliable results. He formulated a theory, demonstrated it multiple ways in multiple species(repeatable with predictable results), even human babies(which is why he was shut down).

He alone un-checks most of what you've checked.
(granted he's listed as a physiologist but the area he worked was also psychology, how the mind functions)

Not textbook pseudo anything.

clyph: omeganuepsilon: It's a science, but it's in it's infancy. It's not fake(pseudo), it's limited.

I disagree.

Psychology overwhelmingly lacks the methodological rigor of the physical sciences and science-based medicine. There are a few bright pockets of scientific rigor (which are mostly coming from under the neuroscience banner), but they are by far the exception rather than the rule.

You are focusing solely on the clinical side of Psychology, and ignoring the social, behavioral, cognitive (though much of this is neuroscience), I/O, quantitative, and many other sides.

As the other guy pointed out, Pavlov got very consistent results, Asch got very consistent results, look at Cialdini's work on interpersonal decision making, or Chomsky's work on language acquisition. These are all very clearly science, and blow your checklist out of the water.

Psychology is about a lot more than mental illness. What you have a problem with is psychiatry. Psychology is about how people do what they do, why they do what they do, how different situations change that, and how to make humans better at what they do. Trying to boil all human actions down to chemical levels in the brain is like trying to boil medicine down to elementary particles not doing what we want them to, or being where we think they should be. It may be technically correct, but it doesn't do anyone any good at that level, and we'll be much better off if we expand our view a little bit, and see those misplaced particles as a gangrenous finger that needs to be chopped off.

Personally, I hate clinical psych, absolutely despise it, but there is a lot of good stuff in the field as a whole.

/Graduated yesterday with a psych degree, so getting a kick, etc.
//gap year with americorp before grad school

vanish57: You are focusing solely on the clinical side of

Imo, it's the repercussions of liberal philosophy. Talking about X without knowing the details of how it works, and more or less, attempting to circumvent actual work to come to a conclusion.(in essence, still trying to prove itself as "valid")

Psychiatrists may be terrible people on the whole, but nothing is innately wrong with psychiatry as a study/method of treatment. There are plenty of success stories, people with real problems, who get a solution with taking drugs. X does indeed help with problem 23. Knowing how and why is science.

On the whole, I find that too many people look at something and make prejudicial remarks about a lot of supposedly "debatable" sciences just because they're pretty far from being reliable. They look at electronics and say, "we've got that, that's a science" and other things that are not up to that pretty crazy standard are simply not a "science" to them. It doesn't meet their personal and arbitrary vision of what science is.

They don't take into account that things like psychology are much more complicated than modern technology and are infinitely harder to study. When it comes to something they cannot fathom, they resort to claims of pseudo-science.

Psychology, Neuroscience, psychiatry, biology, physiology, etc, are all tied together, or sub-branches of each other, by necessity, when studying humans. People don't quite see that, they think it unknowable, answers unattainable, and therefore, not science. A pure example of bad philosophy that's limited humanity throughout history.

Philosophy, in concept wass a good thing, but I do take terrible issue with it because it's been warped and deluded over the centuries, it's rules, it's labels, it's procedure, created as they go along and are rigid and irrelevant, wonky, or just plain ridiculous, but stumbles upon tiny grains of truth along the way.

It's late blooming ugly ducking of a sibling, science, does a much better job at figuring out how things work.
(there is no innate question of "why", once you make the distinction, and they dislike that you can't assume there is a "why" at because it implies choice/design/outside influence).
Philosophy should leave science alone and stick to poetry and religion(if it actually wants to help advance society/understanding), or at least not contradict and fight against science. It's like a modern agnostic trying to cover all bases so that it's never wrong or culpable, but really has no feeling about anything, except it's own grandness. Largely irrelevant, and pompous.

[disclaimer: Sure, "why" is valid linguistically, as a casual word substitute. "Why are we here?" is an improper question, but rather understood as "How did we come to be here?" If we trace "how" back far enough, we may indeed find a "why", but it is not an implicitly necessary fact. Believing that there is a "why" is akin to religious fanaticism.

The distinction is required, because in a technical discussion, specificity and logic over rule casual/common language fads/drift that do nothing but muddy the waters(a special talent of philosophy)]

Julie Cochrane: Being a little bit nuts may be the price we pay for being able to even conceive of the question: Where do you see yourself in five years?

I don't know about that guy, but I know where I'll be.
Without waxing philosophical*ick*, in the nuthouse.

I could swear I saw more posts here. Stuff's disappearing in front of my eyes practically.
[sigh]
Devil's in the details though. It's a crappy medium to hold some conversations.
Will see you around.