What consists of a mental disorder?
That's a good question. In a way, naming and defining disorders doesn't make them exist itself. But most people accept that certain people have mental disorders and that they exist. So how do we draw that line? What is pathology, and what is normal?
I fully appreciate some skepticism of what defines a mental disorder.
As I said earlier in this thread. I am in an abnormal psychology class right now. We read the DSM 5. That is, diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. All those people who went into revising and writing the DSM are the people who decided what consists of a mental disorder. So you'll forgive me if my mind is in that zone of spitting out lines from the DSM. I think the DSM is full of useful information. But at the same time. There are certainly problems as well. Luckily, clinicians are not bound to follow the DSM at all times if they disagree with some things. For example, the DSM includes sleep apnea. WTF? There is no psyche component to that disorder. It's medical. But there it is, right there in the DSM. As if to say "See, this book can be full of shit."
I think a lot clinicians understand that fitting people into little boxes isn't always the answer. And the line between normal and disordered is often blurred. Especially for many mental disorders whose symptoms are fairly common for normal people. It's a very real and serious question. Where do you draw that line? I like to think of it as more of a spectrum, usually. People can be sub-clinically depressed, or anxious, or have an eating disorder. Meaning, they have some "issues" about it, but it's not necessarily something that can or needs to be helped by a clinician.
The DSM is amazingly great sometimes too. It gets pretty specific about a lot of things, and you'll see people who fit these diagnostic parameters like a glove. And their psychological syndromes will be very very similar. They are then given that clinical label that so many hate. But that's where the statistics comes in. Studies and public health agencies use and analyze these statistics to figure out ways to help people with these syndromes. It's in everyone's best interests to figure out the most accurate definitions and treatments for each of these syndromes. So it doesn't exist just to stigmatize and dehumanize people. Although, that is a very real problem as well! Clinicians learn to hate people who have certain mental disorders, and it affects the care they provide. Plus all the stigma from uneducated people who hardly even have a grasp on what the labels mean. There is a mount Everest of bullshit out there in regards to laypeople's thoughts on mental disorders. Even at my level, which is not all that educated, it's getting pretty difficult to be led up this mountain by people who don't know shit over and over. I think that's one issue that people run into with mental health professionals. They've heard so much bullshit from so many people over the years that they've figured out how to avoid going there again. And people feel like they aren't being listened to. Well, it's true, they aren't! And sorry to say, but it's because they are full of it on 90% of what they say. And the part they are right about, they hardly can articulate why, or even their reasons for why they are wrong. Honestly, I am sure I'll follow suit, and figure out ways to not listen to people's bullshit.
Obviously there is a glaring problem. For most mental disorders the definitions are arrived at by observing people with symptoms and signs. While there isn't a whole lot of lab/imaging testing going on. Neuroscience is making good headway on this. But it's still a long ways off. So we're left with a bit of a flawed science. Soft science I like to call it. It's certainly a hard pill for me to swallow.
I feel like my skepticism and other people's skepticism are on different planes though. A lot of uneducated folks are super skeptical, but for the wrong reasons. Or there are huge glaring flaws in the reasoning behind their skepticism of psychology. Or, their problems with mental disorders are real, but I've already thought about it about a million times before. People want to talk about how depression and anxiety are over medicated and over diagnosed. but depression is the most prevalent of all mental disorders. So folks have experience with that. People should understand though that doctors are sort of trained to look for signs and symptoms of depression because it's a huge risk for suicide. And they are trying to get people treatment as soon as possible. Many doctors try to err on the side of caution. And they are not psychiatrists or psychologists. Usually people bring up feelings of depression to their primary care physician first. They are the first line of treatment for people suffering from depression.
Suffering is what it really comes down to. significant impairment in life, or distress about it. People seek out help. Or they need help and they don't know it yet. And mental health clinicians are really operating at that level more than anything. They want to help people. Their suffering is real, whatever label you want to put on it. If I were a mental health clinician right now and someone came to me with their problems I would listen to them as a person. An individual. But at the same time I would be trying to figure out what box their suffering fits into. But only as a means to help them. Many others with similar mental health problems have come before them. There are all sorts of studies and statistics that can help guide me to the treatments most likely to help this person. Helping them is the focus. They are there, and I would be trained to help. The DSM is just a tool in that box of help I would have at my fingertips. And mental disorders are defined with that goal foremost.
One thing I have learned from studying psychology is that far more often than mental health professionals, laypeople are the ones misdiagnosing people and exaggerating. People are always talking about depression, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar, and labeling people in their life. But once you learn about what these disorders are really like, you notice that everyday people are trying to label people who don't actually have clinically significant problems. When you observe people who really have depressive, anxiety, ADHD, and bipolar disorders that come to clinicians for help, they are usually far more severe than the threshold for disorder to a layperson. Plus, why are they labeling them to begin with? Mental health professionals label people as a means to help them. Laypeople label people as a means to stigmatize them. That seems to be what the purpose of this thread was originally meant as: Call out the crazy fuckers on the shroomery. But I think we should approach this with more compassion. These people are suffering. For example, people with borderline personality disorder are disliked for their behaviors by many. But those behaviors are really over emotional reactions. How would it feel if you couldn't help reacting with too much emotions to everything? It would be terrible! You'd always take everything personally, and get angry about things. That's just one component to BPD. But people don't think about that. They just see a person with borderline being a total fucker. That's not doing anything to help that person.
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