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Should Mental Disorders Have Names?

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?

#21

Post by mikorym »

komali2 wrote: post #6

I'm skeptical as hell of the entire field of psychotherapy, psychology, psychiatry, and cog sci. I think we're doing better than before, sure, but it's all such a shit show from my perspective as a participant. Rambles: Back in highschool we had a massively depressed friend. They tried it all with her: cognitive behavioral therapy, drugs (ALL OF THEM), weed, religion. Tough love. Exercise. Diet. Nothing cured her and…

> Human genome, done.

The main takeaway from the Human Genome Project was that we understand less about DNA now than we thought we did in 1999.

Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?

#22

Post by blanche_ »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #20

The root issue here is finding some path forward for helping people. Psychiatry, psychology etc aren't doing a great job with that. He tries to determine what has happened historically but not why. Why was this guy using drugs starting at age ten? What led up to that? Shouldn't it be classified as a parenting failure, not a "disorder" on his part? What was the history with the father? Perhaps assaulting his father wa…

This is different situation here. He is not doing therapy nor treatment for this guy just evaluating for the study.

Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?

#23

Post by jstarfish »

diminoten wrote: post #17
jstarfish wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to hear about your friend. I swear psychiatrists are exempt from observing the Hippocratic oath. "I need help. My life is falling apart. I'm struggling with work and school. I might have a learning disability." "You sound depressed. Here's a prescription for some obscure variant of an SSRI not covered by your insurance." "These meds you put me on make me feel sick." "Let's increase your dose." "I want to hurt o…

Would you rather: "This just isn't working." "Okay, well we tried." Once you're in the "this isn't working" phase of your story, shit is pretty dire. Hard to blame the caregiver for trying something else.

Honestly, yes. The solution to something not working is seldom to increase its complexity and/or double or triple down on it.

Bad treatments often exacerbate or inflict the symptoms they're supposed to correct.

Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?

#24

Post by DoreenMichele »

blanche_ wrote: post #22
DoreenMichele wrote: post #20

The root issue here is finding some path forward for helping people. Psychiatry, psychology etc aren't doing a great job with that. He tries to determine what has happened historically but not why. Why was this guy using drugs starting at age ten? What led up to that? Shouldn't it be classified as a parenting failure, not a "disorder" on his part? What was the history with the father? Perhaps assaulting his father wa…

This is different situation here. He is not doing therapy nor treatment for this guy just evaluating for the study.

I realize that. I don't think it's pertinent to my point.

It matters very, very much whether we label someone as "a victim of a crime suffering PTSD" or "crazy" by some fancier term for crazy. If the diagnostic tools he is using make no effort to make such distinctions, they won't make that distinction for purposes of clinical treatment either.

Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?

#25

Post by jstarfish »

baddox wrote: post #19
jstarfish wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to hear about your friend. I swear psychiatrists are exempt from observing the Hippocratic oath. "I need help. My life is falling apart. I'm struggling with work and school. I might have a learning disability." "You sound depressed. Here's a prescription for some obscure variant of an SSRI not covered by your insurance." "These meds you put me on make me feel sick." "Let's increase your dose." "I want to hurt o…

I can only imagine the frustration you are describing, but I still wonder if the blame is really on the doctors or the branch of medicine. Is there a better alternative?

Hard to say.

I think the branch itself is too immature to have as much clout as it does, but we'd make a lot of progress if they'd start listening to their patients more than they listen to their drug reps.

Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?

#26

Post by mrburton »

Just imagine a doctor telling you what ICD code you have. There's nothing wrong with classification and labeling things. I think society is getting a little carried away with such topics. Personally, I think it's a phase that collectively we'll pass and reflect on how extreme we took things in order to try and obtain balance.

There's a difference in calling someone "crazy" vs saying they have a mental disorder. The meaning of "crazy" has changed over the years due to the abusive context it's been used in more and more. A lot of words got redefined over the years, so this isn't new, but the idea of dropping labels or trying to eliminate well established scientific and testable classifications is new.

To future generations, I hope you don't create a culture in which you're continuously stressed out about how others will label you publicly. When I was younger, a kid that was bullied in school could escape it by coming home. These days, you have no escape because of social media. I hope you learn to adjust and navigate these new times. Even older folks struggle with how things are currently.

Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?

#29

Post by hrktb »

mrburton wrote: post #26

Just imagine a doctor telling you what ICD code you have. There's nothing wrong with classification and labeling things. I think society is getting a little carried away with such topics. Personally, I think it's a phase that collectively we'll pass and reflect on how extreme we took things in order to try and obtain balance. There's a difference in calling someone "crazy" vs saying they have a mental disorder. The m…

For me one of the issue of the current names is that their definition change too much depending on the context and the person interpreting them.

For instance if you say someone your arm is 'broken', they understand something is deeply damaged (not just fissured). They might not know the specifics on how it broke, where exactly, how you are healing it or how it impacts you, but they know the basic criticality of it.

If you say you have "depression", they don't know if you'll take your week off to recover or actually need extensive professional follow up with a long term medication. There is no common sense of how bad it is 'broken'.

From there people all have their anecdotes, visions of how they solved "depression" and come with a very personal idea of what your issue is that most of the time will have nothing to do with your actual diagnosed issue.

In that sense the word doesn't work that much as a conveyor of information, they'll just know you have "something". I see the reasoning behind getting rid of a word in medical context if it doesn't bring any viable information with it.

Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?

#30

Post by PavlikPaja »

blanche_ wrote: post #22
DoreenMichele wrote: post #20

The root issue here is finding some path forward for helping people. Psychiatry, psychology etc aren't doing a great job with that. He tries to determine what has happened historically but not why. Why was this guy using drugs starting at age ten? What led up to that? Shouldn't it be classified as a parenting failure, not a "disorder" on his part? What was the history with the father? Perhaps assaulting his father wa…

This is different situation here. He is not doing therapy nor treatment for this guy just evaluating for the study.

Don't you think it's pretty damning for psychiatry if this guy is the first one who figured out he's actually ill from taking drugs, after decades when he was treated as mentally ill?
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