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Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

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Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#141

Post by kbos87 »

Tenoke wrote: post #131
kbos87 wrote: post #115

This isn’t used in medical circles anymore but I’m shocked that it’s still acceptable to label something or someone as “hysterical”, which I believe implies erratic behavior that ties back to having a uterus.

Why wouldn't it be? Clearly people don't mean anything sexist by it, given that most don't know about it, and nobody as far as I know is offended. Who do you want to ban the word for?

To be clear I think intent matters more than anything else, and I’m not an advocate for “banning” terms or shunning people for unknowingly using a term like this - but the history and what it implies is questionable to the point where it’s probably best not to use it personally

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#142

Post by golemiprague »

kbos87 wrote: post #115

This isn’t used in medical circles anymore but I’m shocked that it’s still acceptable to label something or someone as “hysterical”, which I believe implies erratic behavior that ties back to having a uterus.

No post body was provided.

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#143

Post by JamesianP »

photochemsyn wrote: post #12
mistrial9 wrote: post #6

there are three pillars of communication in action at once here, it seems.. one is the accepted technical language of the trained, credentialed specialist; second is the common language used daily to navigate our personal lives; third might be the language used in public discourse, in the media, and in a classroom to non-specialists.. The high-effort piece of writing adds citation-based examples of semi-specialist wo…

I wouldn't call psychology a 'pseudo-science', more that it's at a level of development comparable to 19th century medicine, when the concept of infectious disease being due to transmittable microbes or viruses was not understood. Most 'psychological disorders' today are not diagnosed based on specific physical-chemical tests, i.e. one can say with high certainty that a patient has drug-resistant tuberculosis using a…

Perhaps the pseudoscience label is used too sparingly. When people treat something that is not science as science, that is pseudoscience. Modern society is awash with it, as was 19th century medicine.

I'm not sure how much real science they have in psychology in particular. I'm sure there's some, like I've heard they can use fMRI to analyze the language region of the brain to identify what kind of speech disorder you have. But certainly a lot of publications cross the line.

We can still be fair and say they do help a lot of people with therapy, even if they don't really understand why. Historically craftsmen were ahead of scientists in making working technologies. They weren't necessarily peddling in scams and nonsense, they were just not backed by real science.

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#144

Post by tboyd47 »

killjoywashere wrote: post #132
tboyd47 wrote: post #128

> (3) Autism epidemic. How breathtakingly insulting to the 100,000s of parents and caregivers of autistic children over the past 30 years, who have sacrificed 1,000s of hours, $MM of lost revenue, their own health, their own goals, and even attention that could have been paid to their other children and their community, exerting heroic efforts and sparing no expense to reach into a single child's mind to teach him or…

My wife is a pediatric occupational therapist and I'm a physician in government. I'm still not sure which direction your comment is pointing: is it insulting that the term Autism epidemic is exists, or that this paper suggests it should be avoided?

Excuse me if that wasn't clear.

It's insulting that the paper suggests that the epidemic is not real.

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#145

Post by some_random »

typon wrote: post #113
ndr wrote: post #86

> (27) The scientific method. Many science textbooks, including those in psychology, present science as a monolithic “method.” [...] Contrary to what most scientists themselves appear to believe, science is not a method; it is an approach to knowledge (Stanovich, 2012). Specifically, it is an approach that strives to better approximate the state of nature by reducing errors in inferences. Mmmh is this Psychology opti…

See absolutely nothing wrong with this quote. The "scientific method" is almost a meaningless term because it means different things to different branches of study - discouraging its use for more accurate terminology makes perfect sense.

The trouble is that Psychology as a field has had serious problems with reproducibility since it's inception.

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#146

Post by larve »

tboyd47 wrote: post #128

> (3) Autism epidemic. How breathtakingly insulting to the 100,000s of parents and caregivers of autistic children over the past 30 years, who have sacrificed 1,000s of hours, $MM of lost revenue, their own health, their own goals, and even attention that could have been paid to their other children and their community, exerting heroic efforts and sparing no expense to reach into a single child's mind to teach him or…

The paper suggests that what looks like an epidemic is due to better diagnosis, so that people previously not diagnosed now are. It doesn't discredit autism.

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#147

Post by llbeansandrice »

rhino369 wrote: post #117
light_hue_1 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is basically the case in much of medicine. Pain is not observable. It's reported. Loss of vision or hearing isn't observable, it's reported. You can run tests to get an idea of whether any of these are happening. But you are not observing any of these symptoms. You're observing behavior and inferring what kinds of symptoms the person is experiencing and what degree.

But is a runny nose (observable) not a symptom of a cold? Is fever not a symptom of Covid? If that's how medicine actually uses the term, okay, sometimes terms of art clash with the plain meaning, but damn that is a pretty weird distinction, as a layman.

In the US those would be "signs", not symptoms. Symptoms are things like pain, fatigue, etc. Signs are observable. I think other countries/languages often use "subjective" symptoms and "objective" symptoms.

It's a very useful distinction between things that only the patient can tell you versus things that can be observes and tested for. How do you run a test to determine if a patient is "really" experiencing chest pain? You cannot. You can run tests to try and determine an obvious cause for that symptom, but there is no test to tell you if say perhaps the patient is lying about having chest pain.

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#148

Post by [deleted] »

Tenoke wrote: post #131
kbos87 wrote: post #115

This isn’t used in medical circles anymore but I’m shocked that it’s still acceptable to label something or someone as “hysterical”, which I believe implies erratic behavior that ties back to having a uterus.

Why wouldn't it be? Clearly people don't mean anything sexist by it, given that most don't know about it, and nobody as far as I know is offended. Who do you want to ban the word for?

[deleted]

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#149

Post by bluescrn »

kbos87 wrote: post #115

This isn’t used in medical circles anymore but I’m shocked that it’s still acceptable to label something or someone as “hysterical”, which I believe implies erratic behavior that ties back to having a uterus.

Are there any really good synonyms for 'hysteria' though, to describe a sort of crazed panic around a certain subject?

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#150

Post by a1369209993 »

kbos87 wrote: post #115

This isn’t used in medical circles anymore but I’m shocked that it’s still acceptable to label something or someone as “hysterical”, which I believe implies erratic behavior that ties back to having a uterus.

To be fair, compaining about that makes about as much sense as compaining about the racist implications of the term "good Samaritan", although I agree that, in retrospect, it's pleasantly surprising that social justice warriors haven't tried to ram though a de facto ban anyway.
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