7 ms·

Mental Disorder

50 points by lainon 8y ago

skilled 8y ago
This looks interesting. Going to need to set time aside for something this extensive though.
- PavlovsCat 8y ago
  Yes, this is the kind of thing that doesn't work well with this short window of time during which something is on the front page, I wish it was possible to subscribe to discussions to follow them over a few weeks, rather than hours or 1-2 days at most. I know this is the opposite of helping, but just in case anyone isn't aware just how extensive the whole site is: https://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html https://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html
  - HNLurker2 8y ago
    Exactly, only lurkers view them 9 months or years after. To the downside they cannot comment, but at least some provide useful links and resources was fascinated to read wikipedia views on: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression , and boredom seeing them as learned helplessness.
dr_dshiv 8y ago
"Works of ancient philosophy are focused more on the psyche’s health (or eudaimonia) than its illness. Nonetheless, there are hints that just as a unified soul is one that is healthy (as well as rational and virtuous), a soul lacking unity will be disturbed, or mad. Offering an account of the harmonious soul, whose rational and non-rational elements achieve a unified whole, Aristotle leaves us a picture of the warring and fractured state of an unhealthy soul, for example."
- PavlovsCat 8y ago
  > Socrates used to say, ‘What do you want? To have the souls of rational or irrational beings?’ ‘Of rational beings.’ And of what kind of rational beings, those that are sound or depraved?’ ‘Those that are sound.’ ‘Then why are you not seeking for them?’ ‘Because we have them.’ ‘Then why all this fighting and quarrelling?’ -- Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations" On the other hand, I also really like this, even though it's probably one of those fake internet quotes: > If your heart is broken, don't try to fix it, they work better that way. -- Tibetan monk
  - mikeash 8y ago
    If you keep spreading that last quote, eventually a Tibetan monk will read it and repeat it, and it’ll no longer be fake.
pietrod 8y ago
I have lot of questions on the whole psychology seriousness, but I will skip on them and just ask a simple one: In the case of, let's say, 60% of the population suffering of depression, is that a mental disorder or something that have to be ascribed to external conditions (maybe political, related to environment etc)?
- jdietrich 8y ago
  In the case of, let's say, 60% of the population suffering of depression, is that a mental disorder or something that have to be ascribed to external conditions (maybe political, related to environment etc)? Possibly either, possibly both, possibly neither. It might be the case that social or environmental factors are causing people to become depressed, in a way that could only be fixed by addressing those external factors. It might be the case that people are experiencing difficulty in coping with those external factors, but could learn to thrive with the right cognitive tools. It might be the case that we're over-diagnosing depression, or that the concept of depression itself has caused an iatrogenic epidemic. It might be something totally unexpected, like a hitherto-unrecognised prion disease or a strange reaction to an organic pollutant. It's worth noting that, while rates of depression have been rising in recent decades, only 7.3% of the US population suffer from a depressive illness at any given moment; a larger proportion suffer from diabetes. Most people who are diagnosed with depression do get better with the right treatment. We're still a very long way from the point where we can reasonably argue "what does depression even mean if depression is the new norm?". https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171030134631.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171030134631.h... http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/statistics/ http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/statistics/
- devoply 8y ago
  Even SZ has been associated with poor social relationships, as one of the causal mechanisms. Adler's psychology attributes most psychological issues with poor social relationships. In the 70s there was this whole idea that SZ was caused by bad mothers, something which the feminists had a lot problems with. In the end we have no way in modern society to address any of the deeper causes, so the technician simply gives you a medicine that chemically manipulates parts of the brains to make them behave differently... in some cases those manipulations cause long term damage to the brain which often is written off as a side effect of the disorder.
astazangasta 8y ago
One of the interesting problems with the medical model that emerged during our regular contact with it when our first kid was born is that medicine is intensely normative - that is, it assumes a median condition and looks for outliers that require correction. From a statistical and biological perspective this does not make sense. There is no underlying biological norm - variation is real (as in, our fundamental biology differs), and any normal behavior is merely the result of the central limit theorem, etc. Defining this real variation as disordered seems a fundamental problem. This becomes particularly problematic when those norms are measured using a non-representative sample (e.g. white Americans) and applied to everyone else.
- dkarl 8y ago
  Defining this real variation as disordered seems a fundamental problem. This has been recognized in medicine and mental health for so long that I don't know if you could find someone still practicing who wasn't taught it in school. If you go to a mental health care provider and tell them that your family thinks you have a disorder because you prefer not to socialize and get everything you need delivered so you don't need to leave the house again after work, they're going to ask you if you're unhappy about it or if you feel your life is diminished in some way by an inability to leave the house when you want to. If your kid has six fingers, a doctor's concern will be whether all the fingers are developing in a healthy way or one needs to be removed because it isn't functional and will be a source of pain and injury. The principle hasn't been a panacea for prejudice, of course, notably in the case of homosexuality, but difference itself is not automatically treated as pathology in the absence of social prejudice. Doctors aren't treating people for having red hair or 20/10 vision or thinking stamp collecting is fascinating.
- 0xcde4c3db 8y ago
  > Defining this real variation as disordered seems a fundamental problem. It's a problem that's been recognized in medicine for a very long time. That's why formal definitions of terms like disease and disorder usually aren't based solely on variation, and include a requirement that something actually interferes with a person's ability to function.
- 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

Mental Disorder

50 points by lainon 8y ago

skilled 8y ago

This looks interesting. Going to need to set time aside for something this extensive though.

PavlovsCat 8y ago
Yes, this is the kind of thing that doesn't work well with this short window of time during which something is on the front page, I wish it was possible to subscribe to discussions to follow them over a few weeks, rather than hours or 1-2 days at most. I know this is the opposite of helping, but just in case anyone isn't aware just how extensive the whole site is: https://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html https://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html
- HNLurker2 8y ago
  Exactly, only lurkers view them 9 months or years after. To the downside they cannot comment, but at least some provide useful links and resources was fascinated to read wikipedia views on: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression , and boredom seeing them as learned helplessness.

dr_dshiv 8y ago

"Works of ancient philosophy are focused more on the psyche’s health (or eudaimonia) than its illness. Nonetheless, there are hints that just as a unified soul is one that is healthy (as well as rational and virtuous), a soul lacking unity will be disturbed, or mad. Offering an account of the harmonious soul, whose rational and non-rational elements achieve a unified whole, Aristotle leaves us a picture of the warring and fractured state of an unhealthy soul, for example."

PavlovsCat 8y ago
> Socrates used to say, ‘What do you want? To have the souls of rational or irrational beings?’ ‘Of rational beings.’ And of what kind of rational beings, those that are sound or depraved?’ ‘Those that are sound.’ ‘Then why are you not seeking for them?’ ‘Because we have them.’ ‘Then why all this fighting and quarrelling?’ -- Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations" On the other hand, I also really like this, even though it's probably one of those fake internet quotes: > If your heart is broken, don't try to fix it, they work better that way. -- Tibetan monk
- mikeash 8y ago
  If you keep spreading that last quote, eventually a Tibetan monk will read it and repeat it, and it’ll no longer be fake.

pietrod 8y ago

I have lot of questions on the whole psychology seriousness, but I will skip on them and just ask a simple one: In the case of, let's say, 60% of the population suffering of depression, is that a mental disorder or something that have to be ascribed to external conditions (maybe political, related to environment etc)?

jdietrich 8y ago
In the case of, let's say, 60% of the population suffering of depression, is that a mental disorder or something that have to be ascribed to external conditions (maybe political, related to environment etc)? Possibly either, possibly both, possibly neither. It might be the case that social or environmental factors are causing people to become depressed, in a way that could only be fixed by addressing those external factors. It might be the case that people are experiencing difficulty in coping with those external factors, but could learn to thrive with the right cognitive tools. It might be the case that we're over-diagnosing depression, or that the concept of depression itself has caused an iatrogenic epidemic. It might be something totally unexpected, like a hitherto-unrecognised prion disease or a strange reaction to an organic pollutant. It's worth noting that, while rates of depression have been rising in recent decades, only 7.3% of the US population suffer from a depressive illness at any given moment; a larger proportion suffer from diabetes. Most people who are diagnosed with depression do get better with the right treatment. We're still a very long way from the point where we can reasonably argue "what does depression even mean if depression is the new norm?". https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171030134631.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171030134631.h... http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/statistics/ http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/statistics/
devoply 8y ago
Even SZ has been associated with poor social relationships, as one of the causal mechanisms. Adler's psychology attributes most psychological issues with poor social relationships. In the 70s there was this whole idea that SZ was caused by bad mothers, something which the feminists had a lot problems with. In the end we have no way in modern society to address any of the deeper causes, so the technician simply gives you a medicine that chemically manipulates parts of the brains to make them behave differently... in some cases those manipulations cause long term damage to the brain which often is written off as a side effect of the disorder.

astazangasta 8y ago

One of the interesting problems with the medical model that emerged during our regular contact with it when our first kid was born is that medicine is intensely normative - that is, it assumes a median condition and looks for outliers that require correction. From a statistical and biological perspective this does not make sense. There is no underlying biological norm - variation is real (as in, our fundamental biology differs), and any normal behavior is merely the result of the central limit theorem, etc. Defining this real variation as disordered seems a fundamental problem. This becomes particularly problematic when those norms are measured using a non-representative sample (e.g. white Americans) and applied to everyone else.

dkarl 8y ago
Defining this real variation as disordered seems a fundamental problem. This has been recognized in medicine and mental health for so long that I don't know if you could find someone still practicing who wasn't taught it in school. If you go to a mental health care provider and tell them that your family thinks you have a disorder because you prefer not to socialize and get everything you need delivered so you don't need to leave the house again after work, they're going to ask you if you're unhappy about it or if you feel your life is diminished in some way by an inability to leave the house when you want to. If your kid has six fingers, a doctor's concern will be whether all the fingers are developing in a healthy way or one needs to be removed because it isn't functional and will be a source of pain and injury. The principle hasn't been a panacea for prejudice, of course, notably in the case of homosexuality, but difference itself is not automatically treated as pathology in the absence of social prejudice. Doctors aren't treating people for having red hair or 20/10 vision or thinking stamp collecting is fascinating.
0xcde4c3db 8y ago
> Defining this real variation as disordered seems a fundamental problem. It's a problem that's been recognized in medicine for a very long time. That's why formal definitions of terms like disease and disorder usually aren't based solely on variation, and include a requirement that something actually interferes with a person's ability to function.
8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]