4 ms·

I don't see what justify the claim that he ignores the process of creating new diagnosis. You seam to ignore that the identification of new mental illness alway

by chmike 10y ago

I don't see what justify the claim that he ignores the process of creating new diagnosis. You seam to ignore that the identification of new mental illness always start by one or more psychiatrists describing cases that don't fit in the existing diagnosis frames. From my current understanding, he distinguish the cases of so called "demonic possession" from mental illnessess because the patient show, apparently, so called paranormal capacity he personnally witnessed. This begs for further investigation and verification WITHOUT confirmation bias in one way or the other. The difficulty here is that demonic possession refers to cultural knowledge which could strongly influence interpretation of the facts. It is thus to be verified if such cultural influence could have tainted the study. For now calling theses cases "demonic possession" doesn't prove the existence of a bias, but I consider it a bad scientific strategy because steps should have been taken to move the question into a more neutral space of knowledge to avoid any bias in one way or the other.

DanBC 10y ago
> You seam to ignore that the identification of new mental illness always start by one or more psychiatrists reporting cases which doesn't fit in existing diagnosis frames. He's not reporting these cases. He hasn't written any case studies for his proposed new illness. He hasn't written any peer-reviewed articles about his proposed new "demonic possession" illness. He has said that a small number of these people do not have a mental illness, and he's sent those people back to religious groups.
- chmike 10y ago
  It looks indeed like that, but I don't know. I can't make an enleightened judgment on a newspaper article. Regarding peer review article, it's not always easy. Referees need a way to verify the seriousness of the study and, when possible, the validity of the result. This is not always possible. This doesn't imply the study wasn't serious or the study is invalid. Also, when the article's topic address very controversial subjects, no peer or editor may want to expose his credibility. This again doesn't tell us anything on the quality or validity of the study. In the newspaper article there is evidence of the awareness by the psychiatrist of such types of problem. As a last resort, publishing a book is the best strategy to get the info out and accessible to all. Regarding your last sentence you assume that the religious groups would harm the patient. This is yet an unproven claim. But I agree that this do happen in some case. I won't call that back into question. But currently I don't know if this was the case. I would support an investigation (without confirmation bias) that would verify how the psychiatrists ensured that the patient was in good hands in the religious group. Apparently the psychiatrist is very conscious of his mission to help people. These types of cases are apparently beyond his competence to help or heal them. He can only check if these cases fit the currently known mental desease frames. Testing medication on them as some psychiatrists might have done would be much more irresponsible then leaving them to people who are known to be able to help them (without beheading or burning them). But I agree this is a questionable point. My opinion on all that is that a scientific study is urgent, I mean real scientists.

by chmike 10y ago

DanBC 10y ago

> You seam to ignore that the identification of new mental illness always start by one or more psychiatrists reporting cases which doesn't fit in existing diagnosis frames. He's not reporting these cases. He hasn't written any case studies for his proposed new illness. He hasn't written any peer-reviewed articles about his proposed new "demonic possession" illness. He has said that a small number of these people do not have a mental illness, and he's sent those people back to religious groups.

chmike 10y ago
It looks indeed like that, but I don't know. I can't make an enleightened judgment on a newspaper article. Regarding peer review article, it's not always easy. Referees need a way to verify the seriousness of the study and, when possible, the validity of the result. This is not always possible. This doesn't imply the study wasn't serious or the study is invalid. Also, when the article's topic address very controversial subjects, no peer or editor may want to expose his credibility. This again doesn't tell us anything on the quality or validity of the study. In the newspaper article there is evidence of the awareness by the psychiatrist of such types of problem. As a last resort, publishing a book is the best strategy to get the info out and accessible to all. Regarding your last sentence you assume that the religious groups would harm the patient. This is yet an unproven claim. But I agree that this do happen in some case. I won't call that back into question. But currently I don't know if this was the case. I would support an investigation (without confirmation bias) that would verify how the psychiatrists ensured that the patient was in good hands in the religious group. Apparently the psychiatrist is very conscious of his mission to help people. These types of cases are apparently beyond his competence to help or heal them. He can only check if these cases fit the currently known mental desease frames. Testing medication on them as some psychiatrists might have done would be much more irresponsible then leaving them to people who are known to be able to help them (without beheading or burning them). But I agree this is a questionable point. My opinion on all that is that a scientific study is urgent, I mean real scientists.