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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32828 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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Last time this came up, I gave a variety of DSM listings which were objective. They had symptoms with specific lab tests, or obvious external evidence. If one ends up eating sand regularly, that’s pica; no self-reporting is needed.

There are steelmen for subjective diagnoses like depression, too! My cousin tried to kill himself after his father’s death. He got committed for it, because that’s pretty good evidence that something is going on in his head.

Psychiatry is not limited to gender affirmation and Ritalin. You’re building a case that doctors “will believe anything” based on how many “seem worried” about meta-level concerns for their field. This is compatible with credulous doctors. It also fits with doctors as drug shills for Big Pharma, or as political fifth columnists. Or maybe you just don’t talk about the Scientific Method with lots of psychiatrists, I dunno.

How much of psychiatry do you think is real?

There are steelmen for subjective diagnoses like depression, too! My cousin tried to kill himself after his father’s death. He got committed for it, because that’s pretty good evidence that something is going on in his head.

Is it? I mean, the judgment that suicide is bad or an inappropriate response is itself, a moral and cultural one. The Indian women who threw themselves on their husband's pyres were not crazy - they were doing exactly as their morality and culture prescribed. Suicide right now is considered immoral, so we act to prevent people from doing it... sometimes. I understand it's back in fashion in Canada, and doctors will not only do nothing to stop you from asking for euthanasia, they'll give you a button to do it with.

Items eaten include earth, paper, chalk, feces, glass, paper and other nonfood items.

Huh, but what about paper?

I think getting a full, accurate picture of someone's mind would have to basically involve spying on them without their knowledge to observe how they act. As someone who did see a psychiatrist for ASD (and got medicated), I think it helped overall, though I've been off medication for years and I have a hard time remembering what we did other than chat weekly. But thinking back on it, I think there were patterns of my behavior and other things I never really told him, and I wonder how that would have affected the diagnosis and his approach--but then, I also feel like he told me that I didn't have to talk about everything, or at least, he never pressured me to.

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