3 ms·

How I see it is that they are very careful with the statements they make. It seems to me like there was a study of this disorder in lower income communities in

How I see it is that they are very careful with the statements they make. It seems to me like there was a study of this disorder in lower income communities in the uk, which leaded to the 2%. However, it is unreasonable to then draw the conclusion that it is also 2% in the entirety of the USA, or that it must be lower or higher. Also, I think its still helpful to define a disorder even if you haven't researched globally how many people have it. > The reason for my beef in here mainly that all the numbers are just stated, with no respect to what numbers are. And I would expect either an explanation of a numerical method to estimate this number, or a source as to where this number has been gotten from. I agree that it would be nice have references. However, if you are just diagnosing an illness, it probably doesn't matter that much how many people in the world have this illness, just if the person in front of you has it or not. So the people that are actually using this text don't really need the sources. It seems to me like the main purpose of DSM-5 is to define a bunch of disorders, so everyone has a common language to talk about the actually useful stuff like treatments. So even if it mistakenly says 2% instead of 0.2%, that doesn't really matter, I think. Also, even if it is non-obvious to us, there might still be someplace where sources are listed. (IE maybe if you look at some meeting notes of the author committee)

IFC_LLC 1y ago
You are stating exactly the problem. A well written scientific book would never leave a reader in a state of “maybe”. Also, if the numbers go down to 0.2% I can’t help but notice that this can’t be defined as a disorder. It is a statistical error. There is a placebo effect. Furthermore any doctor knows the rule of self-diagnosis. “Any patient, given a chance, will self-diagnose anything”. With no data on how the data about illness was obtained I can’t say if this is a statistical error or a fluke. Also, as noted above, should there be a method of testing for such a condition that is objective, I would live with 2% or 0.2%. (For example, 0.001% of people are missing this and this chromosome, and we know that because we can do a DNA test.) But there is no way of saying something like this just cause you did a survey and ask people some vague questions about their mental state. There are people who would just fake answers in their responses for fun. And just cause of that I don’t trust numbers like 2% in this specific case.

IFC_LLC 1y ago

You are stating exactly the problem. A well written scientific book would never leave a reader in a state of “maybe”. Also, if the numbers go down to 0.2% I can’t help but notice that this can’t be defined as a disorder. It is a statistical error. There is a placebo effect. Furthermore any doctor knows the rule of self-diagnosis. “Any patient, given a chance, will self-diagnose anything”. With no data on how the data about illness was obtained I can’t say if this is a statistical error or a fluke. Also, as noted above, should there be a method of testing for such a condition that is objective, I would live with 2% or 0.2%. (For example, 0.001% of people are missing this and this chromosome, and we know that because we can do a DNA test.) But there is no way of saying something like this just cause you did a survey and ask people some vague questions about their mental state. There are people who would just fake answers in their responses for fun. And just cause of that I don’t trust numbers like 2% in this specific case.