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I think it's interesting to look at how psychiatric disorders are invented. For example, is homosexuality a mental disorder? It's basically just a bunch of psyc

I think it's interesting to look at how psychiatric disorders are invented. For example, is homosexuality a mental disorder? It's basically just a bunch of psychiatrists getting together, suggesting stuff and voting on it. It is not science. http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/05/the-real-problems-with-psychiatry/275371/ http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/05/the-real-p...

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
x5n1 11y ago
To be functional in an inherently dysfunctional system that is the nature of hierarchical society. It is made for certain personalities to thrive at the cost of others who may or may not be economically as important, but then why should personality and behavior be judged by the economic and social ability of an individual, but that's what psychology is really for... for enforcing, disciplining and punishing people that don't conform to the economic or social norms, who are therefore not functional in conventional settings. Who are hunter gatherers by their nature and not corporate drones, for instance.
- tossaway1 11y ago
  Even hunter gatherer societies had social structure and norms. And in those societies people far outside the norm were probably treated much worse than they are in today's society.
  - x5n1 11y ago
    Nothing as it is today. If you could hunt or gather you had a place. And you were related to everyone in your tribe by blood. So it is a similar relationship to the one that you have with your family or extended family. So yes to an extent you are right, but at the same time the social cohesion was much greater. In modern society if you are out you are out, you have no recourse at all. Hunter gatherer societies probably not as much. But I am sure if you did certain things in some of those groups that were out of the social norm they would kill you. But lots of things that you would get in trouble for today would not raise a brow in their societies. There are lots of trivial things that you can get in trouble for in mass societies that are of no concern to someone living in a tribal setting today for instance.
    - CJefferson 11y ago
      I suspect (I don't have evidence I will admit, I'd be interested in any real evidence that exists!) that you have far too rosy a view of hunter / gather lifestyle. Mostly, it was more important for people to follow the rules, or people die. You (for example) couldn't keep quiet when you had to (while hunting, or hiding)? Food would escape, people would die. You felt some days you couldn't face going outside to hunt or gather? There wasn't a safety net for people to keep bringing you food until you felt up to it again.
      - adrusi 11y ago
        Hunter-gatherer societies were much more egalitarian than today's, this much is agreed upon by the anthropological community. It's just a result of small group size and homogeneity, along with a lack of specialization. What you're talking about is real, that if you couldn't fit into the norms of the group you would be shunned. Typically you wouldn't have trouble fitting into those rules, because they would have been all you were ever exposed to. You would have no reason to ever doubt them. Some people would be better than others at various tasks, for example, keeping quiet on a hunt, but then they would just do something else. Maybe you're worse than useless on a hunt, but instead you have a good eye and can spot and identify a mushroom better than anyone else. There wasn't a safety net for people to keep bringing you food until you felt up to it again. These small societies were built on reciprocity. In the short term you would be supported by general human goodness. If you simply couldn't contribute to collecting food, there were other things you could do as well. If you were too fond of animals to kill them, you might be coralled into some kind of medicinal role. If you were afraid to leave the settlement, you might find yourself weaving ropes, or maybe building weapons, fixing roofs.
      - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
        That's incorrect. See e.g. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/39730301_Food_Distribution_Among_Hunter-Gatherers_in_Northern_Siberia_Tests_of_Evolutionary_Hypotheses_Invited_Session_New_Research_in_the_Evolutionary_Ecology_of_Food_Transfer https://www.researchgate.net/publication/39730301_Food_Distr... Societies which operate purely on self-interest tend to be very bad at survival. Altruism and compromise are essential for evolutionary success.
- mtbcoder 11y ago
  > but that's what psychology is really for... for enforcing, disciplining and punishing people that don't conform to the economic or social norms... This is quite fallacious. You are essentially describing fundamental peer/societal pressures, not psychology, in some sophomoric attempt at wit. There are individuals who truly suffer from deep psychosis and other troubling issues. Let's not be so callous with our broad brush strokes.
  - x5n1 11y ago
    > There are individuals who truly suffer from deep psychosis and other troubling issues. Let's not be so callous with our broad brush strokes. As Foucault pointed out (and even Sapolsky) these people used to have a job, we called them Oracles or Shaman or Prophets. Instead Psychologists and Psychiatry either wishes to fix them when in many cases they can't be "fixed", by giving them drugs to mess with their already fragile minds or through other means and therapies. Where the humane thing would be to simply give them autonomy and some sort of social way of acquiring food and resources. Many of their problems are caused by the inability of society to accommodate things which are not machines, for instance anxiety problems and depression caused by interaction with the economy itself. We have a a whole set of treatments to make them conform. Rather than accepting them for who they are, and giving them some sort of role to play. Because as I said they are not good corporate drones that follow the logic of production and consumption in the modern economy. If they wish to have any sort of autonomy they must do it through the economy, which has made making a living as a quack more and more difficult through this sort of societal logic. Sure there are minor and major ailments, but don't go around telling me treatment for those ailments is not inspired by making people into tools that are then asked to perform on command. If anything your attempt is sophomoric and completely tone deaf to the larger picture of how these systems fit into our society and what they actually say about it, rather than just trying to "help", it's trying to make them into tools that can be economically exploited so that they are integrated into the system in a very specific, ordered, logical way. Just like religion was trying to "help" those that could not properly be possessed by imaginary things and mental illness. This attempts to do the opposite for those that fit into the mentally-ill religious category. Oh how things change.
- conceit 11y ago
  If you talk about illness, it's not about importance, it's about detriment. It's a matter of perspective and an agent can only consider one perspective. Altruism can impose unsolvable constraints on that perspective. You can't say in the same paragraph that a system is dysfunctional and that the personalities thrive, who enforce the system. One functioning part of the system is enforcing the convention. A dysfunctional system is an oxymoron. Enforcing altruism is a different matter. Altruism is inhibited by differing conventions, that preclude cooperation.
threatofrain 11y ago
A mental disorder means a stable cluster of symptoms in a population such that it is (1) statistically abnormal, (2) distressful to a degree (clinical significance), and (3) not ameliorated by a reasonable change in environment. Statistical abnormality is one point that is debated among professionals today because some might say that if obesity becomes pandemic, it's still a disorder. Deafness is also an interesting discussion because there are deaf communities now, so a reasonable change in environment is possible. One does not use science to determine if a cluster of symptoms warrants classification as a disorder. There is no inherency in the universe which demands that. Science can set arbitrary statistical brightlines, study the etiology of a stable cluster of symptoms, if it can be found, and then study a range of possible interventions to the distress. Perhaps in the future, mental decline at age 90 will be considered a disorder, because everyone is mentally sharp even at age 100, the mental decline causes a lot of financial and social distress, and it's not ameliorated by a reasonable change in environment. In the past, it's comprehensible how homosexuality was (1) statistically abnormal, (2) distressful to a degree, and (3) not ameliorated by a reasonable change in environment. People want a concept of mental disorder that is "objective". That's not possible. Disorder is absolutely context-bound.
- maratd 11y ago
  > People want a concept of mental disorder that is "objective". That's not possible. With a bit of effort, I think it is. I disagree with your definition of a disorder. A disorder is anything that negatively impacts an individual when compared to the mean. With a bit of effort, you can statistically measure that based on fecundity.
  - alanwatts 11y ago
    Mental classifications are purely subjective by default.
    - maratd 11y ago
      Not true. We're starting to identify the mutations responsible. There's nothing subjective about that.
golergka 11y ago
Definition of mental illness is relying on whether a condition conflicts with society. Therefore, as a function of 19th century western society, it was a mental illness; thankfully, now it is not. Without a context of environment a definition of mental illness can not possibly exist. For example, paranoid schizoprenia wouldn't be a mental illness in an environment where all paranoid fantasies turned out to be true.
- diskcat 11y ago
  >Definition of mental illness is relying on whether a condition conflicts with society. This just sounds like a scientified social inquisition.
  - threatofrain 11y ago
    The definition of mental disorder is a permanently context-bound construct. There is no inherency in nature or physics which requires a classification of disorder. However, the construct is both useful and abusable.
- sedeki 11y ago
  That they want to exclude environmental factors does not mean "pick an arbitrary universe".
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  Abject incoherency is a symptom of some mental disorders that doesn't appear to rely on the context. There are others I think: sudden lack of abilities without any corresponding [macroscopic] physical symptoms probably counts. Your last sentence appears to rely on living in a Universe completely unlike our own.
- kazinator 11y ago
  Yes, paranoid schizophrenia would still be a mental illness in which the fantasies turned out true, if they turned out true by complete fluke. That is to say, if some crazy nonsense for which you have absolutely no evidence turns out true by amazing coincidence, it was still crazy to have believed it.
diskcat 11y ago
Well it's only a matter of time before being a 'homophobe' is considered a mental disorder and will make the person liable to be sent to a mental 'hospital' until he recants his viewpoint. This was a favourite strategy of Stalin, by the way. If somebody didn't like communism enough then surely he must be a loon.
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  Is there such a person, someone irrationally fearful of homosexuals?
- soylentcola 11y ago
  Right, because people are so frequently sent for forced "re-education" when they hold unpopular opinions.
  - _qhtn 11y ago
    Isn't that what compulsory 'sensitivity training' is?
    - DanBC 11y ago
      You might want to look at what re-education actually was before you try to imply equivalency with a chat at work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reeducation_camp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reeducation_camp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_North_Korea#Reeducation_camps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_North_Korea#Re...
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
- nmrm2 11y ago
  1. This actually happened to homosexuals in the west during the twentieth century. The worst social ostracization faced by individuals who disapprove of homosexuality today really is not even noteworthy by comparison. Compare Brandon Eich to Alan Turing, for example. More-over, pathologizing homosexuality continues to happen in many parts of the world and even, de facto, in some parts of the US (e.g., "gay camps", which often have some component of psuedo-psychology on top of their religiosity). 2. Popular presidential candidates and members of the party that controls congress openly and proudly express anti-homosexual views. The idea that society is on the verge of pathologizing people who disagree with homosexuality is absolutely absurd.
hamstergene 11y ago
Isn't absolutely all taxonomies created by just a bunch of people getting together and deciding what should be classified as what?
- ideonexus 11y ago
  Exactly, which is why I support the National Institutes of Mental Health's (NIMH) efforts to move away from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), which is just a dictionary of subjective labels for collections of mental health symptoms, to the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC), which is a matrix of measures that place patients along a variety of psychological spectrums to understand their mental illness [1]: While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity. Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or the quality of fever. Indeed, symptom-based diagnosis, once common in other areas of medicine, has been largely replaced in the past half century as we have understood that symptoms alone rarely indicate the best choice of treatment. In contrast with the vastly superior RDoC Matrix [2]: The RDoC research framework can be considered as a matrix whose rows correspond to specified dimensions of function; these are explicitly termed “Constructs,” i.e., a concept summarizing data about a specified functional dimension of behavior (and implementing genes and circuits) that is subject to continual refinement with advances in science. Constructs represent the fundamental unit of analysis in this system, and it is anticipated that most studies would focus on one construct (or perhaps compare two constructs on relevant measures). Related constructs are grouped into major Domains of functioning, reflecting contemporary thinking about major aspects of motivation, cognition, and social behavior; the five domains are Negative Valence Systems (i.e., systems for aversive motivation), Positive Valence Systems, Cognitive Systems, Systems for Social Processes, and Arousal/Regulatory Systems. The columns of the matrix represent different classes of variables (or units of analysis) used to study the domains/constructs. Seven such classes have been specified; these are genes, molecules, cells, neural circuits, physiology (e.g. cortisol, heart rate, startle reflex), behaviors, and self-reports. Circuits represent the core aspect of these classes of variables – both because they are central to the various biological and behavioral levels of analysis, and because they are used to constrain the number of constructs that are defined. Investigators can select any level of analysis to be the independent variable for classification (or multiple levels in some cases, e.g., behavioral functioning stratified by a genetic polymorphism), and dependent variables can be selected from multiple columns. In addition, since constructs are typically studied in the context of particular scientific paradigms, a column for “paradigms” has been added; obviously, however, paradigms do not represent units of analysis. [1] http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia... [2] http://www.nimh.nih.gov/research-priorities/rdoc/index.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/research-priorities/rdoc/index.shtml
mpg33 11y ago
"Disorder"...Dis-order...I think the word used is telling
- mitchty 11y ago
  Well yeah, its latin. Dis meaning not, order being a more recent english from old french ordre which was more religious order at the time. Words evolve, its useful to know their etymology.
Diederich 11y ago
Also BDSM, polyamory and others. The former is no longer a mental illness in of itself since it formed the basis of a popular movie. (Said representation was piss poor, but the point stands.)
- cuckcuckspruce 11y ago
  I don't know, I found "Secretary" to be quite all right. Isn't that the big movie with the lawyer named Grey that everybody was talking about last year? :-)
  - Diederich 11y ago
    Ah yes..The Secretary was more than quite all right!
- jensen123 11y ago
  I find it interesting that if you have odd/unusual sexual preferences, then you are often considered mentally ill, but if you have some odd/unusual preferences for other things (like operating systems, for example), then that is in most cases not considered a mental problem. What's so special about sex? I guess psychiatry basically took over and continued the old Christian religious prejudices.
  - chc 11y ago
    Even outside of psychiatry, sex is widely held to occupy a special place in the psyche. This is why forcing somebody to have sex with you is a very serious crime, but forcing somebody to use Windows is not.
    - jensen123 11y ago
      Sexual preferences that psychiatry considers mental disorders, like BDSM, fetishism and transvestism, or previously homosexuality and masturbation, usually have nothing to do with forcing anybody. Seems like much of psychiatry basically boils down to "we don't like this, so we consider it a mental disorder". As for the sexual stuff, I guess it comes from the old Christian idea that sex that is not for procreation is wrong, which is probably a result of agriculture. In an agricultural society, you want the maximum amount of children, I guess. I find it fascinating that so many people are holding on to these obsolete beliefs (I mean, there are probably already too many people on this planet from an environmental point of view), although these beliefs do seem to gradually crumble as we speak.
thaw13579 11y ago
To be fair, it's mostly an attempt to classify and not "invent." A large part of this is trying to understand things that genuinely bother people, e.g. visual and auditory hallucinations, anxiety, suicidal thoughts. Why wouldn't you want some naming convention so that clinicians can have a conversation about it? But of course there are abuses as well, like your example of homosexuality, though it don't think that's the same as something like schizophrenia, which is a horrible experience regardless of what society calls it.
kingkawn 11y ago
"It's basically just a bunch of [group self-designated experts] getting together, suggesting stuff and voting on it. It is not science." That is science.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  You don't vote on science. You vote to gauge degree of consensus. Science would be a bunch of experts getting together, suggesting stuff, and systematically invalidating each incorrect suggestion with rigorously controlled experimentation until the remaining suggestions can be presumed to be correct at a certain degree of precision.
kazagistar 11y ago
It functions as a moderatly effective way to match treatments to people who might get good milage out of them.
jandrese 11y ago
In the broadest sense, Psychiatric disorders are internal mental conditions that prevent a person from being a happy productive member of society. If you live in a society that demonizes homosexuality, then it kind of makes sense to call it a psychiatric disorder. In this case however the solution wasn't to cure the homosexuals, but to cure society.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

x5n1 11y ago

To be functional in an inherently dysfunctional system that is the nature of hierarchical society. It is made for certain personalities to thrive at the cost of others who may or may not be economically as important, but then why should personality and behavior be judged by the economic and social ability of an individual, but that's what psychology is really for... for enforcing, disciplining and punishing people that don't conform to the economic or social norms, who are therefore not functional in conventional settings. Who are hunter gatherers by their nature and not corporate drones, for instance.

tossaway1 11y ago
Even hunter gatherer societies had social structure and norms. And in those societies people far outside the norm were probably treated much worse than they are in today's society.
- x5n1 11y ago
  Nothing as it is today. If you could hunt or gather you had a place. And you were related to everyone in your tribe by blood. So it is a similar relationship to the one that you have with your family or extended family. So yes to an extent you are right, but at the same time the social cohesion was much greater. In modern society if you are out you are out, you have no recourse at all. Hunter gatherer societies probably not as much. But I am sure if you did certain things in some of those groups that were out of the social norm they would kill you. But lots of things that you would get in trouble for today would not raise a brow in their societies. There are lots of trivial things that you can get in trouble for in mass societies that are of no concern to someone living in a tribal setting today for instance.
  - CJefferson 11y ago
    I suspect (I don't have evidence I will admit, I'd be interested in any real evidence that exists!) that you have far too rosy a view of hunter / gather lifestyle. Mostly, it was more important for people to follow the rules, or people die. You (for example) couldn't keep quiet when you had to (while hunting, or hiding)? Food would escape, people would die. You felt some days you couldn't face going outside to hunt or gather? There wasn't a safety net for people to keep bringing you food until you felt up to it again.
    - adrusi 11y ago
      Hunter-gatherer societies were much more egalitarian than today's, this much is agreed upon by the anthropological community. It's just a result of small group size and homogeneity, along with a lack of specialization. What you're talking about is real, that if you couldn't fit into the norms of the group you would be shunned. Typically you wouldn't have trouble fitting into those rules, because they would have been all you were ever exposed to. You would have no reason to ever doubt them. Some people would be better than others at various tasks, for example, keeping quiet on a hunt, but then they would just do something else. Maybe you're worse than useless on a hunt, but instead you have a good eye and can spot and identify a mushroom better than anyone else. There wasn't a safety net for people to keep bringing you food until you felt up to it again. These small societies were built on reciprocity. In the short term you would be supported by general human goodness. If you simply couldn't contribute to collecting food, there were other things you could do as well. If you were too fond of animals to kill them, you might be coralled into some kind of medicinal role. If you were afraid to leave the settlement, you might find yourself weaving ropes, or maybe building weapons, fixing roofs.
    - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
      That's incorrect. See e.g. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/39730301_Food_Distribution_Among_Hunter-Gatherers_in_Northern_Siberia_Tests_of_Evolutionary_Hypotheses_Invited_Session_New_Research_in_the_Evolutionary_Ecology_of_Food_Transfer https://www.researchgate.net/publication/39730301_Food_Distr... Societies which operate purely on self-interest tend to be very bad at survival. Altruism and compromise are essential for evolutionary success.
mtbcoder 11y ago
> but that's what psychology is really for... for enforcing, disciplining and punishing people that don't conform to the economic or social norms... This is quite fallacious. You are essentially describing fundamental peer/societal pressures, not psychology, in some sophomoric attempt at wit. There are individuals who truly suffer from deep psychosis and other troubling issues. Let's not be so callous with our broad brush strokes.
- x5n1 11y ago
  > There are individuals who truly suffer from deep psychosis and other troubling issues. Let's not be so callous with our broad brush strokes. As Foucault pointed out (and even Sapolsky) these people used to have a job, we called them Oracles or Shaman or Prophets. Instead Psychologists and Psychiatry either wishes to fix them when in many cases they can't be "fixed", by giving them drugs to mess with their already fragile minds or through other means and therapies. Where the humane thing would be to simply give them autonomy and some sort of social way of acquiring food and resources. Many of their problems are caused by the inability of society to accommodate things which are not machines, for instance anxiety problems and depression caused by interaction with the economy itself. We have a a whole set of treatments to make them conform. Rather than accepting them for who they are, and giving them some sort of role to play. Because as I said they are not good corporate drones that follow the logic of production and consumption in the modern economy. If they wish to have any sort of autonomy they must do it through the economy, which has made making a living as a quack more and more difficult through this sort of societal logic. Sure there are minor and major ailments, but don't go around telling me treatment for those ailments is not inspired by making people into tools that are then asked to perform on command. If anything your attempt is sophomoric and completely tone deaf to the larger picture of how these systems fit into our society and what they actually say about it, rather than just trying to "help", it's trying to make them into tools that can be economically exploited so that they are integrated into the system in a very specific, ordered, logical way. Just like religion was trying to "help" those that could not properly be possessed by imaginary things and mental illness. This attempts to do the opposite for those that fit into the mentally-ill religious category. Oh how things change.
conceit 11y ago
If you talk about illness, it's not about importance, it's about detriment. It's a matter of perspective and an agent can only consider one perspective. Altruism can impose unsolvable constraints on that perspective. You can't say in the same paragraph that a system is dysfunctional and that the personalities thrive, who enforce the system. One functioning part of the system is enforcing the convention. A dysfunctional system is an oxymoron. Enforcing altruism is a different matter. Altruism is inhibited by differing conventions, that preclude cooperation.

threatofrain 11y ago

A mental disorder means a stable cluster of symptoms in a population such that it is (1) statistically abnormal, (2) distressful to a degree (clinical significance), and (3) not ameliorated by a reasonable change in environment. Statistical abnormality is one point that is debated among professionals today because some might say that if obesity becomes pandemic, it's still a disorder. Deafness is also an interesting discussion because there are deaf communities now, so a reasonable change in environment is possible. One does not use science to determine if a cluster of symptoms warrants classification as a disorder. There is no inherency in the universe which demands that. Science can set arbitrary statistical brightlines, study the etiology of a stable cluster of symptoms, if it can be found, and then study a range of possible interventions to the distress. Perhaps in the future, mental decline at age 90 will be considered a disorder, because everyone is mentally sharp even at age 100, the mental decline causes a lot of financial and social distress, and it's not ameliorated by a reasonable change in environment. In the past, it's comprehensible how homosexuality was (1) statistically abnormal, (2) distressful to a degree, and (3) not ameliorated by a reasonable change in environment. People want a concept of mental disorder that is "objective". That's not possible. Disorder is absolutely context-bound.

maratd 11y ago
> People want a concept of mental disorder that is "objective". That's not possible. With a bit of effort, I think it is. I disagree with your definition of a disorder. A disorder is anything that negatively impacts an individual when compared to the mean. With a bit of effort, you can statistically measure that based on fecundity.
- alanwatts 11y ago
  Mental classifications are purely subjective by default.
  - maratd 11y ago
    Not true. We're starting to identify the mutations responsible. There's nothing subjective about that.

golergka 11y ago

Definition of mental illness is relying on whether a condition conflicts with society. Therefore, as a function of 19th century western society, it was a mental illness; thankfully, now it is not. Without a context of environment a definition of mental illness can not possibly exist. For example, paranoid schizoprenia wouldn't be a mental illness in an environment where all paranoid fantasies turned out to be true.

diskcat 11y ago
>Definition of mental illness is relying on whether a condition conflicts with society. This just sounds like a scientified social inquisition.
- threatofrain 11y ago
  The definition of mental disorder is a permanently context-bound construct. There is no inherency in nature or physics which requires a classification of disorder. However, the construct is both useful and abusable.
sedeki 11y ago
That they want to exclude environmental factors does not mean "pick an arbitrary universe".
pbhjpbhj 11y ago
Abject incoherency is a symptom of some mental disorders that doesn't appear to rely on the context. There are others I think: sudden lack of abilities without any corresponding [macroscopic] physical symptoms probably counts. Your last sentence appears to rely on living in a Universe completely unlike our own.
kazinator 11y ago
Yes, paranoid schizophrenia would still be a mental illness in which the fantasies turned out true, if they turned out true by complete fluke. That is to say, if some crazy nonsense for which you have absolutely no evidence turns out true by amazing coincidence, it was still crazy to have believed it.

diskcat 11y ago

Well it's only a matter of time before being a 'homophobe' is considered a mental disorder and will make the person liable to be sent to a mental 'hospital' until he recants his viewpoint. This was a favourite strategy of Stalin, by the way. If somebody didn't like communism enough then surely he must be a loon.

pbhjpbhj 11y ago
Is there such a person, someone irrationally fearful of homosexuals?
soylentcola 11y ago
Right, because people are so frequently sent for forced "re-education" when they hold unpopular opinions.
- _qhtn 11y ago
  Isn't that what compulsory 'sensitivity training' is?
  - DanBC 11y ago
    You might want to look at what re-education actually was before you try to imply equivalency with a chat at work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reeducation_camp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reeducation_camp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_North_Korea#Reeducation_camps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_North_Korea#Re...
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
nmrm2 11y ago
1. This actually happened to homosexuals in the west during the twentieth century. The worst social ostracization faced by individuals who disapprove of homosexuality today really is not even noteworthy by comparison. Compare Brandon Eich to Alan Turing, for example. More-over, pathologizing homosexuality continues to happen in many parts of the world and even, de facto, in some parts of the US (e.g., "gay camps", which often have some component of psuedo-psychology on top of their religiosity). 2. Popular presidential candidates and members of the party that controls congress openly and proudly express anti-homosexual views. The idea that society is on the verge of pathologizing people who disagree with homosexuality is absolutely absurd.

hamstergene 11y ago

Isn't absolutely all taxonomies created by just a bunch of people getting together and deciding what should be classified as what?

ideonexus 11y ago
Exactly, which is why I support the National Institutes of Mental Health's (NIMH) efforts to move away from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), which is just a dictionary of subjective labels for collections of mental health symptoms, to the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC), which is a matrix of measures that place patients along a variety of psychological spectrums to understand their mental illness [1]: While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity. Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or the quality of fever. Indeed, symptom-based diagnosis, once common in other areas of medicine, has been largely replaced in the past half century as we have understood that symptoms alone rarely indicate the best choice of treatment. In contrast with the vastly superior RDoC Matrix [2]: The RDoC research framework can be considered as a matrix whose rows correspond to specified dimensions of function; these are explicitly termed “Constructs,” i.e., a concept summarizing data about a specified functional dimension of behavior (and implementing genes and circuits) that is subject to continual refinement with advances in science. Constructs represent the fundamental unit of analysis in this system, and it is anticipated that most studies would focus on one construct (or perhaps compare two constructs on relevant measures). Related constructs are grouped into major Domains of functioning, reflecting contemporary thinking about major aspects of motivation, cognition, and social behavior; the five domains are Negative Valence Systems (i.e., systems for aversive motivation), Positive Valence Systems, Cognitive Systems, Systems for Social Processes, and Arousal/Regulatory Systems. The columns of the matrix represent different classes of variables (or units of analysis) used to study the domains/constructs. Seven such classes have been specified; these are genes, molecules, cells, neural circuits, physiology (e.g. cortisol, heart rate, startle reflex), behaviors, and self-reports. Circuits represent the core aspect of these classes of variables – both because they are central to the various biological and behavioral levels of analysis, and because they are used to constrain the number of constructs that are defined. Investigators can select any level of analysis to be the independent variable for classification (or multiple levels in some cases, e.g., behavioral functioning stratified by a genetic polymorphism), and dependent variables can be selected from multiple columns. In addition, since constructs are typically studied in the context of particular scientific paradigms, a column for “paradigms” has been added; obviously, however, paradigms do not represent units of analysis. [1] http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia... [2] http://www.nimh.nih.gov/research-priorities/rdoc/index.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/research-priorities/rdoc/index.shtml

mpg33 11y ago

"Disorder"...Dis-order...I think the word used is telling

mitchty 11y ago
Well yeah, its latin. Dis meaning not, order being a more recent english from old french ordre which was more religious order at the time. Words evolve, its useful to know their etymology.

Diederich 11y ago

Also BDSM, polyamory and others. The former is no longer a mental illness in of itself since it formed the basis of a popular movie. (Said representation was piss poor, but the point stands.)

cuckcuckspruce 11y ago
I don't know, I found "Secretary" to be quite all right. Isn't that the big movie with the lawyer named Grey that everybody was talking about last year? :-)
- Diederich 11y ago
  Ah yes..The Secretary was more than quite all right!
jensen123 11y ago
I find it interesting that if you have odd/unusual sexual preferences, then you are often considered mentally ill, but if you have some odd/unusual preferences for other things (like operating systems, for example), then that is in most cases not considered a mental problem. What's so special about sex? I guess psychiatry basically took over and continued the old Christian religious prejudices.
- chc 11y ago
  Even outside of psychiatry, sex is widely held to occupy a special place in the psyche. This is why forcing somebody to have sex with you is a very serious crime, but forcing somebody to use Windows is not.
  - jensen123 11y ago
    Sexual preferences that psychiatry considers mental disorders, like BDSM, fetishism and transvestism, or previously homosexuality and masturbation, usually have nothing to do with forcing anybody. Seems like much of psychiatry basically boils down to "we don't like this, so we consider it a mental disorder". As for the sexual stuff, I guess it comes from the old Christian idea that sex that is not for procreation is wrong, which is probably a result of agriculture. In an agricultural society, you want the maximum amount of children, I guess. I find it fascinating that so many people are holding on to these obsolete beliefs (I mean, there are probably already too many people on this planet from an environmental point of view), although these beliefs do seem to gradually crumble as we speak.

thaw13579 11y ago

To be fair, it's mostly an attempt to classify and not "invent." A large part of this is trying to understand things that genuinely bother people, e.g. visual and auditory hallucinations, anxiety, suicidal thoughts. Why wouldn't you want some naming convention so that clinicians can have a conversation about it? But of course there are abuses as well, like your example of homosexuality, though it don't think that's the same as something like schizophrenia, which is a horrible experience regardless of what society calls it.

kingkawn 11y ago

"It's basically just a bunch of [group self-designated experts] getting together, suggesting stuff and voting on it. It is not science." That is science.

logfromblammo 11y ago
You don't vote on science. You vote to gauge degree of consensus. Science would be a bunch of experts getting together, suggesting stuff, and systematically invalidating each incorrect suggestion with rigorously controlled experimentation until the remaining suggestions can be presumed to be correct at a certain degree of precision.

kazagistar 11y ago

It functions as a moderatly effective way to match treatments to people who might get good milage out of them.

jandrese 11y ago

In the broadest sense, Psychiatric disorders are internal mental conditions that prevent a person from being a happy productive member of society. If you live in a society that demonizes homosexuality, then it kind of makes sense to call it a psychiatric disorder. In this case however the solution wasn't to cure the homosexuals, but to cure society.