4 ms·

Everything is a mental health condition these days. Honestly I think the mental health care industry is getting nervous over how complex, diverse and non-trivi

Everything is a mental health condition these days. Honestly I think the mental health care industry is getting nervous over how complex, diverse and non-trivial it is to understand minds. It's easy for the field to operate on the premise 'but these poor people, we are trying to help them!'. It's at the least, a bit absurd to be hypercritical over every little detail of thinking, acting, behaving, processing, etc and consider that 'help'. I agree with you that perfectionism doesn't have to be a bad thing. It seems more that one has to be cautious with who one displays those characteristics towards because it can easily provocate insecurity in others, unintentionally. Which can be a totally reasonable reaction, life sometimes sucks and happens and things one wants to be devoted to may have to be deprioritized. But if you want to be a perfectionist and are in a place in life where you can afford to devote yourself that much, then you shouldn't let the fact that other people made different choices get to you to the point that it halts your own ability to progress.

creaghpatr 8y ago
>Honestly I think the mental health care industry is getting nervous over how complex, diverse and non-trivial it is to understand minds Swap 'rich' in for 'nervous'.
jerf 8y ago
One thing that helps is to remember is that by the standards of the industry, you do not have a condition unless it is materially adversely affecting your life. The mental health industry is not concerned about whether you are a perfectionist; they are concerned about whether you are having a material negative impact on your life because of your perfectionism. This is obviously a subset of people who have perfectionist tendencies. Another topical example is "internet addiction"; they're not pathologizing "being on the internet a lot", they're pathologizing "being on the internet so much it materially adversely affects your life". I know plenty of people in 2018 who are on the Internet in one form or another "a lot", but at the moment don't know anybody for whom it is materially adversely affecting their life. But I knew someone circa 1997 in college for whom that would be true. (Arguably at one point I came close, but I never quite crossed the threshold of playing Quake II online to the exclusion of the things I needed to do. I perhaps did not do them as well as I should have, but I did them well enough.) Of course there's a lot of give in that boundary, and there are people who cross it. But at least conceptually, the proliferation of pathologies is less bad than it looks. Nominally they're not creating new ones, but merely recognizing more ways in which you can be materially negatively impacted that already existed.
- s-shellfish 8y ago
  > they are concerned about whether you are having a material negative impact on your life because of your perfectionism Sometimes you have to go through the hard stuff to get things to be perfect. Mental health care can sit there and explain every cliche aphorism while you wait to get to that point, but that doesn't mean it's doing anything useful for some individuals. It could just be a waste of time, resources, energy, and distract from focus - especially if you have a problem solving mind you value and accidentally wind up syncing into 'the problems of mental health care' while going through the process of re-correcting maladaptive perfectionism. It has to be taken a possibility that for some people, mental health care itself can have an adverse effect on the mind. If a person isn't getting that validation in their life, it's very easy to jump to other types of problems, like psychological ones. This can give a sense of progress but is ultimately unfilling. Anything can be made to be seen as a problem and anything can be made to be seen as a solution when mental health care is so generalized to the point that literally anything you do can be connected or related in some way to everything you do. That doesn't mean a directional rule of causality can be inferred. The obvious is that anything you do is related directly through the fact that your own existence defines the relation between what you did and what you do. There is that obvious connection. But just because some stuff you do yields results and other stuff does not, doesn't mean there exists an intrinsic rule one can rely upon eternally as though it were gospel. Perfectionism becomes maladaptive when individuals are not willing to be adapative. The mental health care industry is not precluded from this very normal, very characteristic trait of being human. Nothing granted it that authority absolutely and nothing ever will. The industry is made of people just as capable of being flawed as the ones they identify as ill. It doesn't mean they understand all perspectives of being human.
- thinkingemote 8y ago
  Also worth mentioning (is pedantry part of perfectionism?) that in addition to the definition of a disorder as when something is adversely affecting your life, is if it affects other people's lives or the society around you. So some disorders may not affect your own life directly, but they do affect others, or they do affect the society. Societies and cultures change and as so some behaviours become acceptable, this leads their re-classification away from a disorder.
ekianjo 8y ago
> Everything is a mental health condition these days. It's practical because if you have a condition, you can be sold a bunch of products and services you did not need in the first place! Progress. More seriously, the explosion of conditions not based on anything tangible (pseudo, unvalidated criteria) and supported by health professionals trying to capitalize on it is the real issue. It becomes a serious issue when they convince legislators and health bodies that it's real, using lobbying and other tactics.
- emaginniss 8y ago
  And everybody has cancer because oncologists love treating patients and drug manufacturers love selling chemo drugs. If you start thinking that way, almost every profession can be seen under a negative light.
  - s-shellfish 8y ago
    That's the problem with mental health care though. Almost every behavior can be seen under a negative light. It doesn't mean it's a negative behavior.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    Cancer is nothing like that. It's a very tangible and measurable family of diseases. The explosion of "conditions" is all about pseudo-Neuroscience.
tsumnia 8y ago
> It seems more that one has to be cautious with who one displays those characteristics towards because it can easily provocate insecurity in others, unintentionally. This sentence seemed to irk me; because at what point does someone have to police themselves to ensure they don't "hurt someone else's feelings"? My generalization is a bit crass, but that's how this sentence came off.
- s-shellfish 8y ago
  Apologies that you found it irksome! When you have authority (which requires an implicit kind of trust to be established assuming individual A can guide individual B) that establishes a unidirectional responsibility over people. It's a balance. If you want that authority you have to police yourself. I personally do not find myself comfortable in such positions. But I'm aware of the dynamic because it forms a feedback loop. If you show signs of 'weakness' and by 'weakness' I mean taking actions orthogonal to the overarching goal of directing, guiding, teaching, counseling, etc - then the group dynamic can easily devolve into a pedantic sorts of chaos. That doesn't always have to be a bad thing (e.g. good dialogue can result, understanding and new awareness can be established). My perspective in the U.S. we are living in a time where this kind of authority is desired highly by lots of people because it's being reflected as 'the standard' with the current leadership. The problem is it's fundamentally built on principles that operate like a pyramid scheme. If you want that authority, the more you must conform. The more you conform, the more sameness you see. The more sameness you see, the more you can pretend you are the one with the authority. Carrot, stick, etc. So if you aren't the literal leader that allows you to be manipulated very easily. I'd rather just have the awareness. My individual autonomy of reasoning is not something to be sacrificed because it goes down to my own personal core and it is fundamentally vital for me to believe I am sane, which is absolutely essential when I have time to myself to think for myself (not to mention essential for survival, I reason for a living - software). It's clearly easy to get caught in the waves of group thinking. People all make mistakes.
- watwut 8y ago
  I was taught that I should care about that and if I dont, I am lacking self co trol and rude and that is wrong. And practically speaking, if you hurt peoples feelings they will retaliate one way or the other or avoid you. Especially insecure people. Controlling what you say is seen as bad thing online, but it is a thing that majority of people in real world do constantly and are expected to.

creaghpatr 8y ago

>Honestly I think the mental health care industry is getting nervous over how complex, diverse and non-trivial it is to understand minds Swap 'rich' in for 'nervous'.

jerf 8y ago

One thing that helps is to remember is that by the standards of the industry, you do not have a condition unless it is materially adversely affecting your life. The mental health industry is not concerned about whether you are a perfectionist; they are concerned about whether you are having a material negative impact on your life because of your perfectionism. This is obviously a subset of people who have perfectionist tendencies. Another topical example is "internet addiction"; they're not pathologizing "being on the internet a lot", they're pathologizing "being on the internet so much it materially adversely affects your life". I know plenty of people in 2018 who are on the Internet in one form or another "a lot", but at the moment don't know anybody for whom it is materially adversely affecting their life. But I knew someone circa 1997 in college for whom that would be true. (Arguably at one point I came close, but I never quite crossed the threshold of playing Quake II online to the exclusion of the things I needed to do. I perhaps did not do them as well as I should have, but I did them well enough.) Of course there's a lot of give in that boundary, and there are people who cross it. But at least conceptually, the proliferation of pathologies is less bad than it looks. Nominally they're not creating new ones, but merely recognizing more ways in which you can be materially negatively impacted that already existed.

s-shellfish 8y ago
> they are concerned about whether you are having a material negative impact on your life because of your perfectionism Sometimes you have to go through the hard stuff to get things to be perfect. Mental health care can sit there and explain every cliche aphorism while you wait to get to that point, but that doesn't mean it's doing anything useful for some individuals. It could just be a waste of time, resources, energy, and distract from focus - especially if you have a problem solving mind you value and accidentally wind up syncing into 'the problems of mental health care' while going through the process of re-correcting maladaptive perfectionism. It has to be taken a possibility that for some people, mental health care itself can have an adverse effect on the mind. If a person isn't getting that validation in their life, it's very easy to jump to other types of problems, like psychological ones. This can give a sense of progress but is ultimately unfilling. Anything can be made to be seen as a problem and anything can be made to be seen as a solution when mental health care is so generalized to the point that literally anything you do can be connected or related in some way to everything you do. That doesn't mean a directional rule of causality can be inferred. The obvious is that anything you do is related directly through the fact that your own existence defines the relation between what you did and what you do. There is that obvious connection. But just because some stuff you do yields results and other stuff does not, doesn't mean there exists an intrinsic rule one can rely upon eternally as though it were gospel. Perfectionism becomes maladaptive when individuals are not willing to be adapative. The mental health care industry is not precluded from this very normal, very characteristic trait of being human. Nothing granted it that authority absolutely and nothing ever will. The industry is made of people just as capable of being flawed as the ones they identify as ill. It doesn't mean they understand all perspectives of being human.
thinkingemote 8y ago
Also worth mentioning (is pedantry part of perfectionism?) that in addition to the definition of a disorder as when something is adversely affecting your life, is if it affects other people's lives or the society around you. So some disorders may not affect your own life directly, but they do affect others, or they do affect the society. Societies and cultures change and as so some behaviours become acceptable, this leads their re-classification away from a disorder.

ekianjo 8y ago

> Everything is a mental health condition these days. It's practical because if you have a condition, you can be sold a bunch of products and services you did not need in the first place! Progress. More seriously, the explosion of conditions not based on anything tangible (pseudo, unvalidated criteria) and supported by health professionals trying to capitalize on it is the real issue. It becomes a serious issue when they convince legislators and health bodies that it's real, using lobbying and other tactics.

emaginniss 8y ago
And everybody has cancer because oncologists love treating patients and drug manufacturers love selling chemo drugs. If you start thinking that way, almost every profession can be seen under a negative light.
- s-shellfish 8y ago
  That's the problem with mental health care though. Almost every behavior can be seen under a negative light. It doesn't mean it's a negative behavior.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  Cancer is nothing like that. It's a very tangible and measurable family of diseases. The explosion of "conditions" is all about pseudo-Neuroscience.

tsumnia 8y ago

> It seems more that one has to be cautious with who one displays those characteristics towards because it can easily provocate insecurity in others, unintentionally. This sentence seemed to irk me; because at what point does someone have to police themselves to ensure they don't "hurt someone else's feelings"? My generalization is a bit crass, but that's how this sentence came off.

s-shellfish 8y ago
Apologies that you found it irksome! When you have authority (which requires an implicit kind of trust to be established assuming individual A can guide individual B) that establishes a unidirectional responsibility over people. It's a balance. If you want that authority you have to police yourself. I personally do not find myself comfortable in such positions. But I'm aware of the dynamic because it forms a feedback loop. If you show signs of 'weakness' and by 'weakness' I mean taking actions orthogonal to the overarching goal of directing, guiding, teaching, counseling, etc - then the group dynamic can easily devolve into a pedantic sorts of chaos. That doesn't always have to be a bad thing (e.g. good dialogue can result, understanding and new awareness can be established). My perspective in the U.S. we are living in a time where this kind of authority is desired highly by lots of people because it's being reflected as 'the standard' with the current leadership. The problem is it's fundamentally built on principles that operate like a pyramid scheme. If you want that authority, the more you must conform. The more you conform, the more sameness you see. The more sameness you see, the more you can pretend you are the one with the authority. Carrot, stick, etc. So if you aren't the literal leader that allows you to be manipulated very easily. I'd rather just have the awareness. My individual autonomy of reasoning is not something to be sacrificed because it goes down to my own personal core and it is fundamentally vital for me to believe I am sane, which is absolutely essential when I have time to myself to think for myself (not to mention essential for survival, I reason for a living - software). It's clearly easy to get caught in the waves of group thinking. People all make mistakes.
watwut 8y ago
I was taught that I should care about that and if I dont, I am lacking self co trol and rude and that is wrong. And practically speaking, if you hurt peoples feelings they will retaliate one way or the other or avoid you. Especially insecure people. Controlling what you say is seen as bad thing online, but it is a thing that majority of people in real world do constantly and are expected to.