There seems to be a good deal of armchair skepticism in the comments. Psychiatry relies on identifying patterns in the kind of data that the average person lacks: observations that can only be made within the special social contract of therapy, or cognitive profiles that are statistically rare in the general population. Plus, all psychiatric disorders are necessarily on a spectrum, but the severe end tends to be pretty obvious. Schizoid personality disorder for example looks like this [0] (as a side note, I’m not sure about the ethics of publishing this on YouTube). I think once you see a good example, you realise it’s a pretty well defined condition.
Schizoid Personality Disorder
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Re: Schizoid Personality Disorder
#32That industry should be taken with a grain of salt, IMHO, because I'm pretty sure you can diagnose literally every person on Earth with _something_ in the DSM.
Maybe some "disorders" in the DSM should just be considered personality types.
You'll be surprised what seemingly benign chemicals like calcium do to peoples personality's. I call hard water and strong black tea, liquid cocaine!
Re: Schizoid Personality Disorder
#33[flagged]
Re: Schizoid Personality Disorder
#34That industry should be taken with a grain of salt, IMHO, because I'm pretty sure you can diagnose literally every person on Earth with _something_ in the DSM.
Why would that be a reason not to trust this field? I could understand this argument more if you were talking about a specific disorder being diagnosable in every person on earth--because how is that a disorder if it's the norm?--but you're very much not saying that.
As an example, would you consider dentistry untrustworthy as a whole just because dentists would diagnose almost every person with a cavity or some form of tooth or gum damage at some point in their lives?
Re: Schizoid Personality Disorder
#35There seems to be a good deal of armchair skepticism in the comments. Psychiatry relies on identifying patterns in the kind of data that the average person lacks: observations that can only be made within the special social contract of therapy, or cognitive profiles that are statistically rare in the general population. Plus, all psychiatric disorders are necessarily on a spectrum, but the severe end tends to be pret…
It's wild how many people in here and elsewhere seem to be ignoring the "disorder" part and assume that any behavior that sounds like it matches the diagnostic criteria is qualifying, and either don't consider degree of impact on daily life or other disorders which might match them better. These aren't supposed to be treated like Myers-Briggs types.
Re: Schizoid Personality Disorder
#36Thanks for posting this. It's better than I remember.
Re: Schizoid Personality Disorder
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would be curious to know what percentage of the diseases in the DSM vs the ICD are based on empirical tests. Questionnaires are not empirical.
I don't think either of us know that, but I makes sense to start asking increasingly hard to answer question while you're pushing the goalpost around.
My original comment in this thread was how anyone could be diagnosed with something in the DSM, and usage of subjective methods is a major way that can happen, so it seems the goalpost didn't move at all.