What is Digg?71 Comments
- Poco, on 10/12/2007, -6/+29Not according to Scientology
- STDOUBT, on 10/12/2007, -6/+21@mikeyaj86
Why the ***** would you respect people who believe they have
evil spirits living in them, and that if they play along with a psych game
and pay enough cash, they'll be able to get rid of said spirits?
Sure you don't actually *fear* them? I do. - Flanker, on 10/12/2007, -5/+20This is based on a lousy experiment. If you go to a psychiatrist and say you've been hearing voices, he or she has no choice but to believe you, and diagnose you accordingly. They're not lie-detectors, they're physicians. Now I realize some of them are diagnosing people who don't meet every last criterion for the disorder, but someone who meets 4 criteria for depression is often just as functionally impaired and in need of help as someone who meets 5.
- Flanker, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16If you walked into your family doctor's office and claimed to have pain in certain joints of your body for long enough, you could probably get a diagnosis of fibromyalgia. Does this mean your family doctor can't tell what's wrong with you? There are many conditions (mental and non-mental) which lack objective tests. If your idea of a physician is a human polygraph, then this is right up your alley. My point is that this is an artificial experiment. Psychiatrists aren't trying to find liars; they're trying to help people who need it. Incidentally, any person who fakes a mental illness is deserving of a psychiatric diagnosis based on that fact alone. The only exception I can think of is someone who is running this kind of experiment, and I don't have to tell you how rarely that occurs.
- Ray301, on 10/12/2007, -4/+18Not according to Tom Cruise... and we all know he knows more about psychiatry than published researches and those psychologist/psychiatrists who spent 8 years in school. The 8 voices in my head also agrees ;)
- Apreche, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14Yes, psychiatry is real and it works. Keep the scientologist culties off of digg please.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12Only 8? My good man, you're almost Clear!
- ksgant, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12I would agree with you about psychology that it almost borders on pseudo-science sometimes...but psychiatry (which is a medical doctor with medical school training and all that entails) is a science. It DOES qualify as a science with quantification, observations, and measurements all taking part. Theories come up, they can be tested (with new drugs or other methods), CAT or MRI scans can then observe the effect upon the brain etc etc. There is a whole lot we don't know about the brain, but SO much more we do know than we did just a few decades ago.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10This is kinda funny but if you go to Barnes and Noble (at least the flagship store in NYC) look for the psychiatry books.
You won't find them in Medicine, you won't even find the Psychiatry section next to the Medicine section.
I noticed when I went before last semester that the Psychiatry section was next to Spirituality. The store isn't alphabetically arranged either...
Scientolgists at work? - Flanker, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10No, the experiment was actually carried out as described in the article. The patients were to act normal AFTER they were admitted. But when they were first seen, they were to report experiencing auditory hallucinations. You can read a transcript of Rosenhan's original report here: http://www.stanford.edu/~kocabas/onbeingsane.pdf
- Dingc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Uhmmmm... if you go in a psychiatric ER acting all crazy... well, "normal" people rarely do that. First, that experiment was unethical; you're wasting the ER’s time. Second, going to a psychiatric ER probably means you have some problem; much like going to a hospital ER probably means something is wrong. Third, certain mental disorders can come and go, so you can hear voices one moment but then not hear them later.
- DrMatt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9As a therapist, let me point out some things. DSM diagnoses are very difficult, but they DO give you a starting point to deal with symptoms. You need a "serious" enough DSM diagnosis to get paid by insurance. Just because someone is critical of psychology does NOT mean it's from a Scientologist.
'nuf said... - Rabid_Llama, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Problem is, scientologists have driven people insane, and scientologists have killed. The Church of Scientology exists to extract money from its members. The human dignity goes away once you start lying, stealing, and killing.
- grungyhamster, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10How do you come to this conclusion? I would be much more receptive to it if you had, you know, REASON for your deductions.
- The_Dude, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7With psychologists--Yes. With psychiatrists--NO. A psychologists or therapist is the one that "just talks", however they frequently will know a lot about the various medications and their effects, even though they cannot prescribe them.
A psychiatrist, of course, will diagnose a disorder. After that, they basically monitor medications and their effects, and make adjustments as necessary based on what the patient reports (or family) to them.
Now psychiatrists can also be broken down to the kind that are IN the hospitals, i.e. the psych wards, and the kind that are in offices and do the med maintinance.
There may be some psychiatrists out there who do "talk therapy", but that's really not their function or training. - DrMatt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Interesting comment... Then... I guess it's silly to pay firemen high salaries to mostly sit around and then drive fast just to stand around so they can spray some water around.
- Llan, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9Now this is an amazingly well written article. This is scientific - sheeding light all all possible aspects of the question and method and trying to explain every single one of them. And still written in easy language, and understandable. This is rare!
- Rabid_Llama, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Do psychiatrists misdiganose? Of course they do. All doctors do -- even for purely objective things like cancer, people often get second and third opinions. Psychiatry is very difficult, because the mind is a complex thing, but there are definite guidelines for diagnosing various disorders. The real question is, are the psychiatrists working the ER trained well enough or being ethical enough in allowing these patients to be admitted.
- 1337d00d, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5wtf are all these scientolgy reports doing on here, I dont want anything remotely connected to scientology invading my consciousness
- crad14, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"Also, time and money seems to be a big issue. If a standard therapy doesn't work on you within some time that seems to be the norm, you are just diagnosed as difficult (borderline personality disorder)."
The reason I am being so defensive about this is because I volunteer at a counseling center and I have seen first hand how wonderful therapy can be for a person. None of it is about money because we don't charge a fee. I realize that there are some situations in which therapy does not work. But there are MANY cases in which it makes a world of difference for the client. I can't begin to tell you how many people have come in to the center and left saying, "Comming here was the best thing I ever did for myself". While I understand that the mental health field is a work in progress I also respect and recognize the great deal of good that can come out of it. Catagorizing therapy as completely useless is an extreme exaggeration and the reason some people "follow it like a religion" is because it has helped them. - MehYam, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Real psychiatry is of similar complexity to debugging spaghetti code. You need two willing participants (debugger and program, or psych and patient), and it takes time, iteration, analysis, and patience to understand how things work. The idea of assigning labels to people is as unhelpful as assigning labels to a crash; 10 different programmers might offer 10 different opinions after a quick, superficial analysis of the bug. All 10 ideas could be worthy of investigation, and more than one could be right.
The point? Psychiatric diagnoses (aka "labels") don't get you anywhere, because we're just too damn complicated. Unfortunately fixing minds is not as easy as fixing bad OS installations ...you have to work with the OS you were born with, even if it's, god help you, Windows ME. (see, this is how you discuss psychiatry on Digg). ;) - sensibleshoes, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I see a flaw in the rebuttal study - in that if you simply quiz psychiatrists about how they would diagnose symptoms - and they answer those questions in their office, they are likely to present what they would IDEALLY do. They know they're under scrutiny for something, and they're going to present a "make myself look as good as possible" answer. What they'd actually do in a clinical situation may be completely different. To rebut a previous study, you have to duplicate the conditions, or it doesn't prove anything.
Whether or not the first study holds any scientific merit is a whole other issue, the point is just that flawed science doesn't prove much. - willcode4beer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Just a little note on the force argument above.
In most states, it only takes the signature of two doctors to lock you up for a few days (the number depends on the state). You will then be re-evaluated to determine if you should stay locked up. This is a trivial action and normally happens based on the word alone of a police officer. (Usually they pick some one up acting wacky and drop them off at a mental health facility). Once there, a nurse can have you put in restraints for refusing medication.
If you pick up a PDR, you'll see that most anti-psychotic drugs will create psychosis in those who do not have the disorder. Many drugs for schizophrenia also cause the disorder in those who do not have it. Pychosis and schizophrenia are reason enough to keep you locked up in a mental health facility.
This is something to consider when talking about various civil rights abuses. You can literally be picked up, locked up, and drugged into oblivion indefinitely. - willcode4beer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Ok, some one shows up at a psychiatric emergency room.
Are we supposed to think that nothing is wrong?
Why would someone go to a psychiatric emergency room if nothing is wrong? - Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"I've never liked those sorts of tests. If you ask me a question like, "Do you sometimes feel like there are things going on you can't explain?""
That's why most online self tests are considered *****. A test is normally followed up by one or more interviews by (hopefully) a qualified person. Yet there are probably plenty of people who follow the following path: do an online test, read up about what they "have", then visit a professional and talk about all the symptoms, exaggerating the whole thing, en ending up with a prescribtion for SSRI, mood stabilizer, anti-psychoticum, etc. - portis, on 10/12/2007, -20/+22Xenu say you now kneel....Xenu say you now suck......Xenu say you now swallow.....aaahhhh Xenu now satisfied.
- willcode4beer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@UtuOnYou
How, someone says something bad about psychiatry and gets instantly branded.
You know, you don't have to be a scientologist to disagree with how things are handled in the world of psychology.
The psychological experiments in Auschwitz were still evil. - MacCombe, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5I like the way, in the context of how uncertain the whole business of diagnosis is, they state with such authority that a computer program correctly diagnosed schizophrenia 81% of the time. Wouldn't someone have to be 100% sure of their diagnoses to come up with that statistic for the software's performance?
The obvious answer to that, perhaps, is to point out that the comparison was between clear cases of schizophrenia and unquestionably healthy brains - in which case the 81% figure seems much less impressive. - psylion, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"I would agree with you about psychology that it almost borders on pseudo-science sometimes...but psychiatry (which is a medical doctor with medical school training and all that entails) is a science. It DOES qualify as a science with quantification, observations, and measurements all taking part. Theories come up, they can be tested (with new drugs or other methods), CAT or MRI scans can then observe the effect upon the brain etc etc."
I only have 8 years of post-graduate education and ten years experience working with people who suffer from mental illness, so perhaps I cannot compete with someone who has medical school training and all that entails (my guess is that you have no idea what than entails). I have to stand up for my discipline and inform you that psychologists do use observations and quantifiable measurements. Our theories can be tested and are.
With our “pseudo science” we are often the ones to use observation and measurements to refute the theories of psychiatrists. You might also be interested to go to almost any medical school in the country find that the psychiatrists are being taught about diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders by psychologists. In addition no psychiatrist has ever tried to diagnose a psychological disorder using at CAT or MRI scan outside of a research setting (where it has inevitably failed miserably.) One can see if someone has had seizures or a stroke by looking at one of these scans but no one can tell if someone has depression or schizophrenia by looking at one of these scans or any other (e.g. PET).
If only we could live in a world where people made sure they have to smallest clue about the topic they are considering before spouting off about it on the internet. - mbthompson, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6Oooh, the Scientologists are panicking! Voted lame, bury this crap! You can't beat the DIGG army!
- Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"Uhmmmm... if you go in a psychiatric ER acting all crazy... well, "normal" people rarely do that."
You are guessing. I guess ( :-) ) that quite some people with minor troubles, after doing some online tests (or in magazines) and talk with some friends end up taking SSRIs. - UtuOnYou, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4The system is still broken? Yes it's broken if you mean "not perfect." Got a better one, Xenu-boy?
- crad14, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4"However, if you then told your doctor your pain subsided, would he force you to continue to take the drug regimen he had placed you on? Because that's what happens in the case of a schizophrenia diagnosis (or many other "mental disorders)."
What exactly are these "many" other mental disorders where they FORCE you to take any drug? You aren't going to be held in a psychiatric ward unless there is something seriously wrong with you and you are a danger to yourself or others, or if for some odd reason you decide to pretend to be a danger to yourself or others. Also, it is unrealistic to think that there aren't plenty of cases where an MD in the "hard sciences" misdiagnoses a patient multiple times before determining the actual problem. In any field of medicine there are wonderful health care professionals and then there are some that are complete idiots.
"I fail to see how slapping someone with a diagnosis helps them. Again, if you are diagnosed with cancer, they then give you drugs that help fight the cancer. If you get slapped with OCD though, well, you get "therapy sessions" and or a useless SSRI."
What reason do you have to think therapy sessions are useless? This is 2006. They're not "slapping" people with anything, and they certainly aren't going around throwing random people into straight jackets and dragging them in for 2 hours of therapy a day. Many people attend therapy voluntarily.For many mental disorders simply popping a pill is useless unless it is coupled with therapy. There are a great deal of people who really enjoy therapy and have found it very helpful. - cabazorro, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3In the field of science and medicine,
psychiatry and psychology is "As Good as it Gets".
I dread the day when a gadget will be able to pick your brain and determine that it's Abe, Abe-Normal - Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4"What reason do you have to think therapy sessions are useless? "
Research? 50% of therapy is effective with depression, same for SSRIs (50%). There are still a lot of therapies given that are proven to be worthless. Yet, some follow them like a religion.
Also, time and money seems to be a big issue. If a standard therapy doesn't work on you within some time that seems to be the norm, you are just diagnosed as difficult (borderline personality disorder). - sogracefully, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1psychiatrists DON'T DO therapy, they do prescriptions and arrogant assumptions without testing. it's so much more useful to skip the psychiatrist visit altogether and start at a psychologist (Ph.D. or Psy.D.) who specializes in assessment/psychological testing, if you really think there's something wrong with you. psychologists have the training required (a doctorate!) and magically lack the cockiness/ignorance of most MDs, and i would speculate that if this experiment were repeated on that population of doctors, the results would be really different.
- danlovejoy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If you walked into your family doctor's office and claimed to have pain in certain joints of your body for long enough, you could probably get a diagnosis of fibromyalgia.
Point very, very well-made. One pedantic nitpick: fibromyalgia is diagnosed by palpitating specific points in the muscles and asking about a patient's pain level. Joint pain may be secondary to fibromyalgia or comorbid.
And good luck getting a generalist to diagnose it. - socokoolaid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yours was an allergic reaction. Mine was a shot in the dark, human gunnie pig, with a crappy medication, just to see what happened. (Also allergic to Penicillin)
- Orbatos, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4It is immediately obvious they didn't try hard enough, the old study's showed holes in the system still not covered and proper dignosis of a psychiatric condition (regardless of treatability) is nearly impossibly during initial consultation for various reasons. The system is still broken.
- Nitro2985, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3I've never liked those sorts of tests. If you ask me a question like, "Do you sometimes feel like there are things going on you can't explain?" I'm going to answer, "Yes" or "No." It's a simple question with only binary answers. Strongly agree, somewhat agree, and the like aren't even sensible answers.
- DrPlacebo, on 10/12/2007, -9/+9"ever since a famous experiment showed that healthy people will be labeled sick if they go to a psychiatric emergency room and act sick...."
inaccurate
That experiment showed healthy people were labeled sick if they go into a psychiatric emergency room and act NORMAL.
That is why the experiment was interesting, every day activity like forgetting where you left something, talking to yourself or biting finger nails can be considered psychotic behaviors.
DRP - danlovejoy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0tehpoutine,
Kooks like the Harvinder Luthra, Chief of Rheumatology at the Mayo Clinic? Gimme a break. - vestige, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4Isn't part of the point so you just have someone to talk to?
- b00st3r, on 10/12/2007, -6/+6I've seen interviews with psychiatrists saying that there is no evidence that chemical imbalance affects behavior. I don't think that psychiatrists are all evil, I think a great deal of them are working off of flawed information. Obviously, if there is physical damage to a brain, then you can have some serious mental illness. Interesting article tho.
- Jorenm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Psychiatric illnesses are voted on by comittee. Do you think real doctors voted cancer into existance? Any mental illness is a collection of symptoms lumped under a label, untill they have the cause it's not an illness. Psychiatric drugs fix nothing, they merely obscure the symptons (Like taking morphine for a bullet wound, instead of surgery).
"Why the ***** would you respect people who believe they have
evil spirits living in them, and that if they play along with a psych game
and pay enough cash, they'll be able to get rid of said spirits?
Sure you don't actually *fear* them? I do."
Uh, no? Read a book, jackass. Will you believe me if I tell you that geologists believe the earth was molded out of chocolate by a turtle named bob? No? Then try not to assume everything you read on the internet is true. - psylion, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I was prescribed penicillin for an ear infection when I was a child. I got a serious rash, my bronchial tubes closed up. I was very ill and could have died without medical attention. I do not, however, believe that penicillin is evil or from the devil nor do I dismiss all antibiotics. I definitely do not believe that my doctor was a quack or that all ear nose and throat doctors are crap.
I wonder what makes your experience with Paxil different than mine with penicillin. - tehpoutine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@danlovejoy
fibromyalgia is a fake disorder, it's what they diagnose you with when they can find NO physical or biological cause for pain you feel. Only kooks will diagnose it - willcode4beer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1"A test is normally followed up by one or more interviews"
Hmmm, psychology and scientology appear the same here.
• take a personality test
• get an interview
• get a diagnosis for "treatment"
I think the only difference is the "treatment" - thekak, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Wow some people are paranoid...
- vertigoblue, on 10/12/2007, -15/+14sounds kind of like early catholicism...
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