3 ms·

> I'd be pretty surprised if there weren't particular forms of it that were disproportionately common at the high as well as low end of the social heirarchy ...

by lutusp 13y ago

> I'd be pretty surprised if there weren't particular forms of it that were disproportionately common at the high as well as low end of the social heirarchy ... Yes -- and my point is there's some serious logical shortcomings in labeling such behaviors as mental illnesses meriting treatment.

dragonwriter 13y ago
There's certainly something wrong with externally compelling treatment if there is no harm to others, OTOH, if the person involved wants to address the dysfunction in other areas of life -- even if the source of the dysfunction also helps them attain high social status -- why shouldn't treatment be available?
- lutusp 13y ago
  > even if the source of the dysfunction also helps them attain high social status -- why shouldn't treatment be available? The answer is, or should be, obvious. Doctors regularly rise from their microscopes and Petri dishes to announce the existence of real diseases, and get public support for treatments and cures. Psychologists would like to posture as doctors (which is why there are psychiatrists, who are psychologists with M.D. degrees), so they can rise from their notebooks and therapy sessions and announce the existence of new mental illnesses and get public support for treatments (there are no cures). But psychologists are not doctors, and the majority of conditions that psychologists treat are hopelessly subjective conditions on which different practitioners cannot agree. The public doesn't understand this -- they don't understand that mind diseases don't have the standing of body diseases, and the reason this is true is because of a largely successful public relations campaign waged by psychologists to make themselves appear as doctors who treat objective medical conditions. But "sluggish cognitive tempo", this week's illness du jour, is not a disease, it's a way for psychologists to feather their nests. Asperger Syndrome was in the same position ten years ago, but has been retired by a vote of the DSM-5 editorial committee after a public relations debacle of overdiagnosis. About "sluggish cognitive tempo": http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/health/idea-of-new-attention-disorder-spurs-research-and-debate.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/health/idea-of-new-attenti...

by lutusp 13y ago

dragonwriter 13y ago

There's certainly something wrong with externally compelling treatment if there is no harm to others, OTOH, if the person involved wants to address the dysfunction in other areas of life -- even if the source of the dysfunction also helps them attain high social status -- why shouldn't treatment be available?

lutusp 13y ago
> even if the source of the dysfunction also helps them attain high social status -- why shouldn't treatment be available? The answer is, or should be, obvious. Doctors regularly rise from their microscopes and Petri dishes to announce the existence of real diseases, and get public support for treatments and cures. Psychologists would like to posture as doctors (which is why there are psychiatrists, who are psychologists with M.D. degrees), so they can rise from their notebooks and therapy sessions and announce the existence of new mental illnesses and get public support for treatments (there are no cures). But psychologists are not doctors, and the majority of conditions that psychologists treat are hopelessly subjective conditions on which different practitioners cannot agree. The public doesn't understand this -- they don't understand that mind diseases don't have the standing of body diseases, and the reason this is true is because of a largely successful public relations campaign waged by psychologists to make themselves appear as doctors who treat objective medical conditions. But "sluggish cognitive tempo", this week's illness du jour, is not a disease, it's a way for psychologists to feather their nests. Asperger Syndrome was in the same position ten years ago, but has been retired by a vote of the DSM-5 editorial committee after a public relations debacle of overdiagnosis. About "sluggish cognitive tempo": http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/health/idea-of-new-attention-disorder-spurs-research-and-debate.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/health/idea-of-new-attenti...