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Should Mental Disorders Have Names?

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?

#31

Post by rjf72 »

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?

The first thing you need to ask is are we, collectively, seeing an improvement or a deterioration of aggregate mental health? And how does this compare and contrast against nations where pharmacological treatment of illness is less and, if such a thing exists, more common? In other words is what we are doing better than nothing? The answer to this question is not always yes, because it's entirely possible that in the process of trying to do something you end up going backwards.

This also cannot be answered with isolated consideration such as the effectiveness of drug 'x' since there are externalities involved. What happens to these individuals in the longrun? The treatment of ADHD with amphetamines is a great one for this question. For those who showed no response to the treatment, are their outcomes better or worse than if they had never pursued treatment? What is the false positive rate and what is the affect of medication on these individuals?

The answer to this question should be obvious, but I'm not so sure it is anymore.

Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?

#32

Post by PavlikPaja »

spacesuitman2 wrote: post #27

>It’s 7:30 A.M. on a frosty Wednesday in December. Exited there. Does anyone know of a bot that condenses the article to get to the point? I don't have time for this.

tl;dr: He needs subjects with a particular mental illness, so he needs to recheck the diagnosis. Turns out this person is actually ill from using drugs since he was 10, so he can't use him in his study, and he wonders how meaningful the diagnoses are.

Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?

#33

Post by PavlikPaja »

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.

The thing is, when there are so many people who insist it isn't working, or even makes things worse, (while nobody has much of idea why the drugs should work in the first place, and there seems to be a growing movement to try treating people with currently illicit drugs instead), maybe the drugs are actually not working and the "experts" actually have no idea what they are doing.

Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?

#34

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?

#35

Post by jgrowl »

The thing that unsettles me is that the diagnosis is all self reported. If I'm already going in to see a doctor because I think my mind isn't right, how can I trust that I am answering the questions correctly with respect to how they are intending them. You're trusting me to answer your questions when I don't feel confident in my ability to answer them and in a couple of hours you've handed down a diagnosis which basically amounts to 'here take these drugs and we'll see you again in a month' Good luck navigating the side effects as well as the problems you originally came in here with by yourself.

Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?

#36

Post by mrburton »

hrktb wrote: post #29
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. I…

I think what you're doing is comparing medical vs layman usage. A doctor will tell his patient they have a "broken arm" due to past experiences in speaking with patients using medical terms. e.g, fracture or distal radius fracture in the case of a broken wrist.

When it comes to mental disorders, it can be very difficult to accurately classify the severity. It reminds me of how doctors prescribe blood pressure medication; it's guess work. e.g, They will prescribe what they think will work and have you come back later to see if it's working properly. In my mom's case, the first prescription made things worse.

Depression can be rooted in chemical imbalances, diet, sudden loss of a job or family member, etc,. It's not like taking a walk will solve everyone's depression. In most cases, it's much more complex than that. That's why there's psychologist and psychiatrist. In some cases cognitive therapy works, some a good diet + workout routine works, and other cases medication is required. There are different levels of depression and they are properly classified by professionals. The word "depression" is like a doctor telling you that you're arm/wrist is broken. e.g, Bipolar Disorder is a type of depression that's treated with medication.

It's a terribly complex thing we're talking about and telling professionals how to define their own vernacular is pretty foolish. It would be like my mom telling me that engineers should drop the phrase "eventually consistent" and just say "consistent". :)

Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?

#37

Post by spacesuitman2 »

PavlikPaja wrote: post #32
spacesuitman2 wrote: post #27

>It’s 7:30 A.M. on a frosty Wednesday in December. Exited there. Does anyone know of a bot that condenses the article to get to the point? I don't have time for this.

tl;dr: He needs subjects with a particular mental illness, so he needs to recheck the diagnosis. Turns out this person is actually ill from using drugs since he was 10, so he can't use him in his study, and he wonders how meaningful the diagnoses are.

Thank you very much.

Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?

#39

Post by leemailll »

jgrowl wrote: post #35

The thing that unsettles me is that the diagnosis is all self reported. If I'm already going in to see a doctor because I think my mind isn't right, how can I trust that I am answering the questions correctly with respect to how they are intending them. You're trusting me to answer your questions when I don't feel confident in my ability to answer them and in a couple of hours you've handed down a diagnosis which bas…

Most of the neurological diseases have no conclusive and unique biomarkers or tests, and symptoms often not unique. There is not much can do to without scales with current knowledge

Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?

#40

Post by Shivetya »

keiferski wrote: post #5

The danger of naming mental disorders (or any other abstract concept) is when you confuse the map for the territory. The map (the name) should serve as the best possible mental model of the territory (the actual, descriptive physiological condition) - not as the thing-in-itself.

I am of the opinion the worst part about naming disorders is the holy hell some groups will have if what they suffer from is described as a mental disorder. Then you will get the other side of the coin where people self diagnose and that sets off a different chain of issues.

So it become six of one and a half dozen of another. For the benefit of the medical community yes we should name them or slot them into broad categories. For the public its best to probably just use broad categories

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