4 ms·

>Another issue is that this progress in research takes awhile before you see results in practice and much longer for it to disseminate through the whole psychia

by konjin 6y ago

>Another issue is that this progress in research takes awhile before you see results in practice and much longer for it to disseminate through the whole psychiatric community. The problem is that when I was a teenager I could walk into any psychiatrists office and leave with whatever drug I had decided I wanted to get high off for that weekend. I memorized a list of symptoms, said I had them to a GP, got a referral to a specialist and repeated them there again. If I started on Monday I could get a prescription by Thursday. Having talked to "problem" kids of friends it that's still the case today. I never took the field seriously, and until I became an adult didn't realize anyone else did either. I just thought of them as legal drug dealers with good quality product, but not as fun as the unregulated product you could get on the street. Imagine my surprise when I found out people actually took prescriptions for decades at a time, something that is as horrifying to me as drinking yourself to sleep every night because someone told you to.

nvrspyx 6y ago
I totally forgot to elaborate on that sentence. I meant to say that it's widely understood within the research community and recently graduated psychiatrists. There's still a lot of bad practice, outdated methodology, and general laissez-faire that the field is still shaking off. It's lingering way too long and dissemination of the up-to-date knowledge is much less effective within psychiatry than other areas. This may be due to it not being readily apparent that you're harming the patient compared to say cardiology, but I can't say for sure. The field of mental health is definitely in a sorry state today, at least in the US. A lot of progress is being made in terms of research and knowledge, but it's not as impactful on the practicing community as it should be.
afarrell 6y ago
So your problem with the field of psychiatry is that psychiatrists can be lied to and they don't put more effort into second-guessing their patients' experiences? ... ... I think you might just be blaming other people for your unethical behaviour as a teenager. https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/24/nominating-oneself-for-the-short-end-of-a-tradeoff/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/24/nominating-oneself-for...
- konjin 6y ago
  If a 14 year old can consistently outsmart multiple professionals then it's not the 14 year old that's the problem. If there no way to detect false positives then everyone is a false positive.
  - afarrell 6y ago
    > If there is no way to detect false positives, then everyone is a false positive. That does not logically follow. Proof by contradiction: I have invented a dumb test for COVID-19: I look at a linkedin profile of someone, then I lick a block of salt. If my tongue tastes salty, then I conclude they have COVID-19. Trivially, my test has no way to check for false positives. So, if ran this test on someone, your statement implies that they would be a false positive and therefore they would definitely be free of COVID-19. Unless you think my salty tongue has magical COVID-curing powers, then even a broken clock is still right twice a day.
    - konjin 6y ago
      I've never seen anyone use false negatives to argue that we should accept false positives as reasonable. I guess there's a first time for everything. But to answer your question, yes, it would be statistically prudent to assume that everyone who passed your test is free of covid because the proportion of the general population who have it is less than 1% currently and your test produces a 100% positive rate. This is a specific case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor%27s_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor%27s_fallacy
  - afarrell 6y ago
    We live in a world of trade-offs. I would rather live in a world where people with real psychological problems can get help and you can get high than the reverse.
    - konjin 6y ago
      And how about people without real psychological problems who ruin their lives? Psychiatry has a rolling history where everything that was done 30 years ago is so barbarous that the treatments are criminalize, and it has been that way for a century. At what point are we going to realize that there is no baby in the bathwater?

by konjin 6y ago

nvrspyx 6y ago

I totally forgot to elaborate on that sentence. I meant to say that it's widely understood within the research community and recently graduated psychiatrists. There's still a lot of bad practice, outdated methodology, and general laissez-faire that the field is still shaking off. It's lingering way too long and dissemination of the up-to-date knowledge is much less effective within psychiatry than other areas. This may be due to it not being readily apparent that you're harming the patient compared to say cardiology, but I can't say for sure. The field of mental health is definitely in a sorry state today, at least in the US. A lot of progress is being made in terms of research and knowledge, but it's not as impactful on the practicing community as it should be.

afarrell 6y ago

So your problem with the field of psychiatry is that psychiatrists can be lied to and they don't put more effort into second-guessing their patients' experiences? ... ... I think you might just be blaming other people for your unethical behaviour as a teenager. https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/24/nominating-oneself-for-the-short-end-of-a-tradeoff/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/24/nominating-oneself-for...

konjin 6y ago
If a 14 year old can consistently outsmart multiple professionals then it's not the 14 year old that's the problem. If there no way to detect false positives then everyone is a false positive.
- afarrell 6y ago
  > If there is no way to detect false positives, then everyone is a false positive. That does not logically follow. Proof by contradiction: I have invented a dumb test for COVID-19: I look at a linkedin profile of someone, then I lick a block of salt. If my tongue tastes salty, then I conclude they have COVID-19. Trivially, my test has no way to check for false positives. So, if ran this test on someone, your statement implies that they would be a false positive and therefore they would definitely be free of COVID-19. Unless you think my salty tongue has magical COVID-curing powers, then even a broken clock is still right twice a day.
  - konjin 6y ago
    I've never seen anyone use false negatives to argue that we should accept false positives as reasonable. I guess there's a first time for everything. But to answer your question, yes, it would be statistically prudent to assume that everyone who passed your test is free of covid because the proportion of the general population who have it is less than 1% currently and your test produces a 100% positive rate. This is a specific case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor%27s_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor%27s_fallacy
- afarrell 6y ago
  We live in a world of trade-offs. I would rather live in a world where people with real psychological problems can get help and you can get high than the reverse.
  - konjin 6y ago
    And how about people without real psychological problems who ruin their lives? Psychiatry has a rolling history where everything that was done 30 years ago is so barbarous that the treatments are criminalize, and it has been that way for a century. At what point are we going to realize that there is no baby in the bathwater?