Should Mental Disorders Have Names?
blogs.scientificamerican.com
Should Mental Disorders Have Names?
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Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?
#2Should anything have a name?
It seems that people are just running out of shit to write about at this point.
And from Scientific American! I trusted you as a kid!
Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?
#3Us humans certainly prefer to put boundaries and names on things. And indeed, it is often unwise i.e. with (one of our) species definitions: A can procreate with B, B can with C but A cannot with C, meaning A==B, B==C but A!=C, a paradox because of our tendencies.
Could it be a cultural thing? While I grow older I find it more natural to think of things as continuous or to assign uncertainty to "facts", but perhaps our educational system does not give much attention to this. Perhaps it's too much about facts and names and boundaries.
In this articles' case though, of course mental disorders are a continuum but the drugs and methods for treatment we have are not. So perhaps in this case a label is nice. One should always keep the continuous nature in the back of one's mind though.
Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?
#4Sure they should, they have a life of their own. Mine are called Alice and Edward... Sorry, we could not resist.
Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?
#5The 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.
Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?
#6I'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 her depression killed her via suicide. What's the psych tell me after? Sometimes there's nothing we can do? That sucks. Human genome, done. Prevent HIV from killing someone. Can't do shit about depression sometimes.
And if you get depression - do you take the ssris? Fuck knows? http://www.healthtalk.org/peoples-experiences/mental-health/... and the "next page." Sometimes they make you numb to the world or feel like you're being controlled. Sometimes they make you have suicidal thoughts. Sometimes they take a weight off your shoulders. Sometimes they make you feel like you actually have a chance. None of my psychs were able to describe any of this. I had to research it on my own.
And Lord forbid you've got multiple. Is it ADHD still? Newest psych has the idea that it's all ADD now - so, my memories of wildcat behavior that I'd be ashamed of in seconds as a kid, what was that? When shit bubbles up out of my mouth without me thinking, is that not the H anymore but just something else? And why did nobody tell me in 2 decades that a common symptom of ADD is shit memory? I had to find out on Reddit. Is it actually? Who knows!
Does Adderall help? Well, I suppose! Hard to say. Technically, I could work without it. I am more productive with. But, also more robotic. And, it's nearly impossible to track the subtle personality changes that come with medicating via Adderall, no matter how hard I journal. Ask the psychs and they shrug and say "keep a journal." Ask what dosage and they say "higher until the side effects are unbearable, then one dosage down," instead of "lower until the medicine is ineffective, then one dose up." And as for those personality changes - perhaps that's a "better" me anyway? It's certainly a smarter one.
Don't get me started on what fresh hell you find yourself in if the State discovers someone is suicidal and locks them in a psych ward. Came damn close to ruining my life by performing a full on jail break to get my friend out of that psuedo science nightmare.
I welcome all thoughts on my rambles and I apologize if no helpful meaning was able to be extracted, on this subject I can think of no other way to get my thoughts on paper.
Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?
#7If you don't have multiple names, you'll have a single name ('insane', or some new euphemism.) People with any sort of disorder would all get lumped together, and human nature being what it is, others would tend to assume the worst of all of them. I find it hard to believe this would be an improvement over the status quo, as imperfect as it may be.
Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?
#8The 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.
The name of a disorder mental or physical is a map or model in the same way that the name of a town or street is. Which is to say, it's not, though it's necessary for identification of a component of a model.
“Diabetes mellitus” isn’t any kind of a model. It's a symptom description dressed up in Latin. We've since attached a useful model to it, but the name long predates the model and has little to do with it.
Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?
#9Should anything have a name? It seems that people are just running out of shit to write about at this point. And from Scientific American! I trusted you as a kid!
I not sure if you are just trolling here, but reading the article it seems clear that the author has a point beyond the usual signifier-signified semiotic crisis.
The author ends by musing about mental diseases being described by coordinates in several dimensions. Sure, perhaps connected regions of that space can be given their own names, but in general, the author believes that our vocabulary lacks the granularity to identify the fingerprint of individual diseases.
I know a lot of hands have already been wrung over the ineffectiveness of natural language in describing the phenomena of the inner world, but in a clinical setting this takes on a new meaning, and the essay is, in my opinion, poignant.
Re: Should Mental Disorders Have Names?
#10"Weeks after Mr. Perry’s involvement in my study ended, he and I met to discuss this article. After I explained the topic of this article, he voluntarily gave me written consent to use his name and describe his clinical history." ?
OT: It's not seriously his real name? There's no way he could have consented. Nor is there value to him or society in naming him. Is it a metaphor?